Immigrant husband stabs wife to death in fit of rage as children sleep

Shifrao Sukul, 60, was arrested for the stabbing death of Sukula Sukul, 48, his wife and the mother of their 11 children at the family's home in Rishon Letzion Friday night. The suspect confessed to the murder, which was the culmination of years of domestic unrest, according to neighbors and one of the couple's daughters.

At about 10:30 Friday night neighbors on Agnon Street in Rishon Letzion, called police to report screams and cries of "Mom, mom" from a nearby apartment.

"The officers who entered the apartment saw a woman lying on the living-room floor, bleeding," Rishon Letzion police commander Ami Eshed said yesterday. Efforts by paramedics to revive Sukula Sukul, who had multiple stab wounds, failed.

Her husband and two of their children were near the body. Shifrao was arrested after one of the children told police he was the perpetrator. The oldest son, Tekele Sukul, 26, who was wounded in the incident, was hospitalized.

The Sukuls immigrated from Ethiopia two and a half years ago and moved into their Rishon home after a short stay in an immigrant absorption center. Neither of the parents worked. A frequent bone of contention between the couple, and apparently the immediate cause of the dispute that led to Friday's murder, was the fact that Tekele continued to live at home. The father wanted him to leave, while the mother was adamant that he stay.

Neighbors described how the older children led their younger siblings out of the apartment. Tekele and his 18-year-old brother stayed inside and tried to stop their father. At some point Tekele jumped on his father, who stabbed him, and wrested the knife out of his father's hands. Tekele passed it to his brother, who grabbed it and ran outside. The police arrived shortly after that. Tekele said afterward that after stabbing his mother, his father went toward the children's bedrooms to kill them. The first one he entered was Tekele's, and that is where the struggle between them - and Tekele's stab wounds - occurred.

"We understand from the children that on the morning of the incident the parents once again argued about the son, and the argument continued into the evening, when the father apparently decided to murder his wife," Eshed said. Shifrao took a kitchen knife, and while nine of their children were sleeping in their rooms - two of the family's children do not live at home - he attacked his wife. The children, the youngest of whom is six, were woken by their mother's screams.

The police said the family did not have a record of domestic violence. Family members, however, said yesterday that the couple had fought for years, especially since coming to Israel, and that Sukula had not wanted to go to the police.

"My father always harassed us. He didn't love us," Tekele Sukul told Haaretz yesterday. "We always tried to please him. He always beat my mother and there were fights at home all the time. He drank large amounts of arak. He was unstable. I don't know a father could look in rooms for his children and want to kill them. It was a miracle that he went into mine first, otherwise he would have murdered the entire family. I didn't hear him attack my mother. What a tragedy my father brought on us," Tekele said.

Tekele's grandfather fills out his daughter's story: "My daughter lost her mother when she was young," Yilau Samneh, 70, related yesterday. "I always worried about her. He was the first boy she ever met. They had 11 children. He always locked the children into their rooms and refused to give them food or let them turn on the lights or take showers."