Burning car fire vehicle
Burning car fire vehicleiStock

A 19-year-old Israeli-Arab man was indicted Sunday for the killing of an elderly neighbor following a dispute over a parking space.

Haifa District prosecutors filed murder charges Sunday against Sohiel bin Hilal Garban, a resident of the Israeli-Arab coastal city of Jisr az-Zarqa.

The charges stem from an incident which occurred on February 12th as a result of a long-running dispute between the family of the accused and a neighboring family over the use of a parking space between their homes.

According to the indictment, on February 12th, Garban approached the car of his 70-year-old neighbor, as the neighbor was parking his vehicle.

Garban poured gasoline on the victim’s car and set it on fire, while the victim was still inside the vehicle.

The victim screamed to passersby for help, prompting several people to try to come to his aid. Several passersby tried to extinguish the victim’s burning clothes, but to no avail. The elderly man suffered second and third degree burns over more than 70% of his body, and was evacuated to Rambam Hospital in Haifa.

Doctors struggled to stabilize the victim’s condition, but were ultimately forced to declare him dead, four days after he was admitted to the hospital.