Last update - 00:00 12/03/2008
Man stabs neighbor to death in argument over parking spot
A 29-year-old Holon man was allegedly stabbed to death by his neighbor Tuesday over a parking place.
"Two men came to me and one of them jabbed a key in my face, but I gave him back some stabbing," suspect Yaron Kapaz told reporters Tuesday as the police were taking him into custody, when they asked him why he allegedly stabbed the victim for wanting to park in his parking place.
The victim, Yosef Bavli, was with another man, who was slightly injured.
The murder occurred Tuesday morning in a neighborhood of shacks in the dunes between Holon and Rishon Letzion. A neighbor said she heard cries for help and called Magen David Adom. "I ran to the next apartment and I saw a man lying twitching. He kept saying 'I'm going to die," she said.
"When we arrived we found two men stabbed following a fight between neighbors over a parking place. The suspect was standing at the entrance to the residence, where he had stabbed the victim. The knife was in his hand, and had been washed," Police Chief Superintendent Meir Cohen said yesterday.
Police said Bavli had come to visit a friend who lived in the neighborhood, and had parked his van next to the friend's car, in the neighbor's parking spot. The neighbor allegedly first came out with a screwdriver and punctured Bavli's tires. When Bavli came out and found the flat tires, and assumed the neighbor had done it, he called his friend and they both went into the neighbor's house and confronted him. In the ensuing fight, Kapaz took out a knife and stabbed both men several times.
"Two men broke into my house... one blocked my parking place. What did you want me to do?" Kapaz told reporters as he was being taken into custody.
The suspect will be brought Wednesday morning for a custody hearing at the Rishon Letzion Magistrate's Court.
The wife and mother of the man who was slightly injured said the neighbors had not previously argued, but were not particularly close. However, another neighbor said the men were in a long-standing feud over the unauthorized use of the suspect's parking place by neighbors.
"Today people murder each other over anything - a dog, a woman, so what's so surprising that this happened?," the mother of the slightly injured man said. She added that the victim was "a wonderful guy, the father of two kids, who worked as a driver for a company that drove doctors to the hospital."
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