Last update - 00:00 26/11/2006
Police, MDA pay compensation to family of man killed during arrest
By Roni Singer-Heruti, Haaretz Correspondent
The police and Magen David Adom (MDA) last week paid NIS 500,000 in compensation to the family of a man who died while being arrested in December 1999.
A judge appointed to investigate the case ruled that the actions of the police officers and medic who arrested Roni Shumar, 34, of Ramat Hasharon, caused his death.
Despite the unusual circumstances and the unorthodox investigation by a judge, the state did not initiate criminal proceedings against those responsible.
"The family is satisfied with the sum of the compensation it received, but the public should not be satisfied at all by the affair, in which a serious failure was exposed, a terrible cover-up, and it all passed by quietly," the family's attorney, Alon Rom, said. "No one will pay the price; there will be no investigation," Rom said.
The incident began one night in late December 1999, when officers from the Ramat Hasharon police station were called to deal with a man behaving wildly at his neighbors' apartment. According to the account given by Shumar's mother and the neighbors, Shumar came to their apartment and asked for an unspecified sum of money for an unknown reason. Shumar was on medication for a mental illness. After he flew into a rage and refused to leave, the neighbors detained him and called the police and MDA.
"I pleaded [with the officers] to bring a doctor to give him a tranquilizer injection. Had a doctor been there, he would be alive today," Shumar's mother, Dorit Reich-Shumar, told Haaretz at the time.
According to the judge's investigation, the calls were answered by police officers, volunteers and an MDA medic. The latter was aware of Shumar's mental illness. The police officers beat Shumar severely, restrained his arms and legs, and covered his mouth and possibly his nose as well.
"And then, with his limbs tied and his mouth covered, the officer and the medic took him by his arms and legs, brought him to the street and laid him on the sidewalk until a stretcher was brought from the ambulance and he was placed on it," the judge wrote in her conclusion. "Shortly after, while in the ambulance, he died."
While he was being dragged down the stairs, Shumar's head hit the stairs repeatedly. The autopsy determined the cause of death to be asphyxiation from vomiting, apparently due to the blows and the fact that his mouth was covered.
A police internal investigation concluded that the police officers had acted appropriately and that Shumar's death was caused by glass shards.