Last update - 00:00 19/02/2007
Swede at Ben-Gurion leaps to death after hurling son over rail
By Haaretz Service
A Swedish tourist jumped to his death at Ben-Gurion International Airport's Terminal 3 before dawn on Monday, after having thrown his young son over a safety railing and onto a railroad track below.
Both landed on a railroad track below a pedestrian walkway. The son, whose injuries were listed as moderate to serious, was saved from an oncoming train by the alertness of a janitor.
Police said the two were Swedish nationals who had been visiting Israel since February 8. "They were meant to board a flight to Vienna [on Sunday], and they probably missed their flight. They stayed at the terminal since then," said Maurice Harush, commander of the airport police station.
Local police in Sweden have already been sent to notify their family of the death, he said. A police investigator is questioning the boy at his bedside, and the boy is responding to the questions.
"At around 3 A.M. an eyewitness spotted a man lifting a boy, roughly eight years of age, and throwing him down seven or eight meters onto the railroad tracks in the airport," Harush told Army Radio.
"Immediately thereafter he jumped also, suffering fatal injuries. Resuscitation efforts were administered immediately on the man, but he died almost instantaneously. The boy was taken in moderate to serious condition to Sheba Hospital in Tel Hashomer."
According to Harush, a cleaning worker who was standing next to the tracks kept an oncoming train from striking the boy. "The father and son were sprawled on the railroad tracks ... and [the cleaning worker] waved at an approaching train that came slowly into the station, managing to stop the train barely several meters before it would have hit them."