A 29 year old Bethlehem resident was arrested Thursday by the Border Police when he approached officers stationed at the checkpoint next to the tunnels on the Jerusalem-Gush Etzion road. The suspicious-looking character was found to be carrying an axe.
Officials said that the man's suspicious behavior led them to thoroughly check his belongings. The officials found the axe hidden under some clothes. Under questioning, he said that he had intended to attack soldiers in Jerusalem in a murder spree. He is in custody and will be brought before a judge for an extension of his remand.
Meanwhile, police continued to investigate suspicions morning that Nataniel Ro'i Arami, a 26 year old Jewish worker, was murdered by Arab construction workers for nationalistic reasons. Police originally thought that his death was accidental. Arami died Tuesday when he fell to his death from the eleventh floor of a Petah Tikva construction site.
However, the few details known about the event so far, according to Walla! News, hint that Arami's fall may not have been accidental.Armi worked at the site along with fellow worker Liron Ovadiah in the hours before the fall, according to the daily, and was first noticed to have been missing after he did not show up for a planned ride home. One worker returned to the construction site to search for him and found him laying dead on the ground.
Both Arami and Ovadiah were to close the vent caps of the security rooms spread along the length of the building, which is being built on Shraga Naftali Street. Due to the complexity in assembling the building's scaffolding, contractors have asked the workers to put up the structure using abseiling, or a form of rappelling along the outside of the building. For several hours they worked on the site, and were due to end at 5:00 pm. At that time, Arami - hanging from cables on the 11th floor via a harness - asked his employees to prepare for the end of the day and pack up.
After the fall, and after he was was found lifeless on the ground, Arami's colleagues called an ambulance, but the Portable Intensive Care Unit at the scene pronounced him dead shortly thereafter.
Arami's funeral was held at 5:00 pm in the Segula Cemetery in Petah Tikva Wednesday, Arutz Sheva has learned, and posters announcing Arami's death suggest that he had been "murdered."
Police have opened an investigation and are said to have made progress, but are so far refusing to release any details.