Three people killed, one person hurt in Ramle shooting spree

A Ramle resident employed as a security guard was arrested Friday afternoon on suspicion that he murdered his aunt and uncle, Bella and Boris Litrovnikov, and his 89-year-old grandmother, Ginda Diobkin, in his apartment earlier in the day.

The suspect was taken in for questioning and confessed to the charges.

The family's neighbor, who first reported the incident to the police, sustained minor wounds after the suspect allegedly shot him in the leg when he approached the apartment to ascertain the source of the noise emanating from there.

According to police sources, the incident was sparked by a family quarrel over the relocation of the grandmother from the suspect's home, to the home of the aunt and uncle.

At around 1 P.M., the police received numerous reports of gunshots at an apartment on Yair Stern Street in Ramle. Police officers arrived at the scene and knocked on the apartment door. The officers waited a few minutes outside the door, when suddenly the suspect opened the door and held out his hands to be handcuffed.

The police found the bodies of the suspect's relatives in the apartment. The wounded neighbor was found in the stairwell.

The initial police investigation revealed that the suspect had finished a shift as a security guard at a cellular phone company Friday morning and went shopping for groceries on his way home. When he arrived at the apartment he found his aunt and uncle, who live nearby, and his live-in grandmother there. An altercation erupted among the family members which later came to blows. The suspect than pulled out his work-issue handgun and allegedly shot his three relatives in the head.

Magen David Adom emergency medical service paramedic Yosel Ismail, who was first to arrive at the scene, described the events. "We received a report of gunshots on Yair Stern Street and when we arrived there was complete silence. There was nothing to indicate the surprise we were about to discover," Ismail said.

"We climbed the stairs with the police officers and found a man with a gunshot wound to the leg at the entrance of one of the apartments," he continued. "He told us that he merely opened the door and suddenly got shot. While we were treating him, the officers stood next to us and suddenly the door of the apartment from across the hall opened and a young man emerged and held out his hands, as if asking to be handcuffed. Then we saw behind him a woman on the floor, bleeding," Ismail explained.

At the time of his arrest, the suspect had ammunition in his pockets. He refused to talk with the police and said that he will speak after consulting with a lawyer.

However, during questioning, the suspect confessed to the charges against him, expressed no remorse, and even told the interrogators that he had written down an account of the events on his personal computer.

The police found another gun in the apartment and will try to determine which gun was used to commit the murders, and why the suspect had two weapons.

The police said that neither the suspect nor the victims had any kind of police records.