The pro-Palestinian protestor who struck an elderly Jewish man on the head and caused his death in Los Angeles had stalked his victim before the deadly altercation, according to witnesses to the event.
Jonathan Oswaks, a friend of Paul Kessler, the 69-year-old man who was murdered at the protest, told the Jewish Journal that after he and Kessler had arrived at the scene, he received a phone call from a friend warning that he was “being watched” and that his face was appearing on a live video online. He then saw three people watching them from a bench, including the man who would go on to murder Kessler.
Oswaks said that Kessler insisted on holding an Israeli flag even after Oswaks asked to hold it since he was taller and stronger and could better defend himself should the anti-Israel activists decide to use the flag as an excuse to engage in violence.
He said that Kessler had warned him how serious having an activist shove a megaphone in his ear could be. “It wasn’t long before the men that were videoing me and Paul stood behind me… with a megaphone in my ear, exactly the way [Paul] told me it was gonna happen.”
Oswaks told the man to get out of his face, and “he crossed the street because, as I said, he stalked us. He got nowhere with the bigger guy, so he went for the smaller guy. He came over here with the megaphone in his hand to do the same thing.”
“Then all of a sudden, I see a punch. The reason I know I could see the punch was because it was the white megaphone flying through the air,” he said.
The anti-Israel activist struck Kessler on the head with the megaphone.
Kessler fell to the ground, bleeding, and was rushed to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead due to blunt force trauma.
The Ventura County Medical Examiner's Office said that Kessler suffered from skull fractures and swelling and bruising of the brain and determined his death to be a homicide. Authorities have not ruled out the possibility the incident was a hate crime, Ventura County Sheriff Jim Fryhoff said Tuesday.
The incident was filmed on the attacker's mobile device and has been seized by local police as evidence in their investigation into the incident.
The attacker has not yet been arrested despite his identity being known to police.
The incident comes amid a disturbing rise in antisemitism in the US, in the wake of the war between Israel and Hamas.