Two Israelis were killed and three people were injured, including two children — all from the same family — in a hit-and-run traffic accident in England on Wednesday night, police and medics said.
The incident happened as the family was standing outside a five-story parking lot on Leopold Street in the southeastern seaside resort town of Ramsgate, Kent police said.
Though police did not give the nationalities of the victims, the Israel-based Zaka emergency service said that it received reports they were Israelis from the same family.
The Foreign Ministry said in a statement that the Israeli embassy’s consul Sima Duvdevani was in contact with the family, who were not immediately identified.
Police said a black Alfa Romeo car veered off the street and hit the family, killing a man in his 80s and a woman in her 30s, while a girl described as of junior school age suffered serious injuries.
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Another man, in his 40s, and a boy of similar age to the girl suffered minor injuries, police said.
Police said a local resident, 30, was arrested on suspicion of causing death by dangerous driving and leaving the scene of a collision, UK media reported. He was receiving medical treatment for minor injuries.
Zaka said that all of the injured Israelis were taken to a hospital. Media reports said the injured girl was taken to a medical center in London for treatment.
RAMSGATE: A suspected hit-and-run driver killed a man in his 80s and woman in her 30s and seriously injured a young girl after a black Alfa Romeo struck 5 members of the same family in Leopold Street around 9.35pm last night. A local man (30) was arrested later. Pic @SweatSteamy pic.twitter.com/L2VKvSyOcE
— Kent 999s (@Kent_999s) August 11, 2022
Ramsgate is the final resting place of Sir Moses Montefiore, the Jewish philanthropist who financed the first modern-day Jewish community in Jerusalem outside the walls of the Old City in the late 1800s.
Montefiore bought an estate in Ramsgate in 1831, and later built a private synagogue on the site. He and his wife, Lady Judith Montefiore, are buried in an adjoining mausoleum.