Police: Stabbing was probably a terror attack

Photo by: Courtesy



By MELANIE LIDMAN AND YAAKOV LAPPIN
19/12/2010

“We are still looking at all directions, continuing the investigation,” says police spokesman, after US woman found dead near J'lem.

Saturday’s stabbing and murder attack in the forest near Beit Shemesh was probably a terror attack, police said on Sunday.

The police investigation is still underway into the attack that wounded Givat Zeev resident Kay Wilson, an olah from Great Britian, and killed her friend Kristine Luken, as they were hiking in the wooded hills west of Jerusalem.
“We are still looking at all directions, still continuing the investigation, and questioning people who may have seen them,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld told the Post. “The main direction is that this was a nationalistic attack, though we haven’t ruled out possibilities of criminal incident.”

“There have been no claims by [terrorist] organizations,” Rosenfeld added. He said that the investigation was a double-pronged approach between police investigation and information from intelligence organizations.


The body of Kristine Luken, an American citizen living in England who was visiting Israel, was found south of Mata, approximately 400 meters from the road between Mata and Beit Shemesh, police said. Her body was discovered around 6:30 AM.

Kay Wilson, a tour guide who worked part time for Shoresh Tours, a Messianic tour company, was seriously wounded and handcuffed, but managed to drag herself to the road. At the road she saw two families, who called the police. After giving a brief recount of the incident, Magen David Adom evacuated her to Hadassah University Medical Center in Jerusalem’s Ein Kerem.

On Sunday, police investigators interviewed her in her hospital bed for several hours. Her condition is improving and she is expected to leave the hospital in two to three days, a Hadassah spokesman said.

“[Wilson] had her hands tied up, and she was stabbed pretty bad in the upper part of her body,” Rosenfeld said. “The obvious intention was to have her killed. This was not something where they were just trying to take her purse. It was a serious crime scene. We’re talking about two women walking around Jerusalem forest, we’re not even talking about Judea and Samaria.”

Several hundred people took part in a massive search overnight Saturday for Luken, which included units made up of rescue dogs, army combat units, police helicopters, mounted police, and several hundred police officers.

After the body was found, police remained at the scene of the crime for an additional three hours, combing the area for any information.

The security level had not been raised in the Jerusalem area as of Sunday, though police were coordinating with security in the villages around Jerusalem and Beit Shemesh to be extra vigilant. Rosenfeld said the police were waiting for “concrete answers” before updating security procedures.

Wilson described her ordeal, telling Hebrew media from her hospital bed how her attacker removed her Star of David necklace before proceeding to stab her in the chest where her pendulum had been resting.

Wilson and Luken had been hiking in the woods when two Arab men asked Wilson for water in Hebrew, she said.

After they disappeared from view, Wilson became uneasy about their intentions, and told Luken they should return to Mata.

As they walked towards the village, the attackers pounced on the two women, stabbing them both repeatedly. Wilson said her attacker had used a knife with a huge blade, adding that it looked like a bread knife. Wilson managed to produce a small blade on her own that she carried for self defense, she said, and stabbed her attacker once, according to her account.

But after being stabbed again and again, Wilson fell to the floor and played dead, as she waited for the suspects to leave. She provided harrowing descriptions of hearing her friend struggle for breath before dying of her injuries on the ground beside her.

After a few minutes, Wilson found that she was able to stand up, and walked towards Mata. She saw a passing car but was unable to shout out due to breathing difficulties. She then found a family sitting in a park, and turned around to show them that her hands had been bound. The family then alerted police.