In the latest in a string of road rage incidents, a man was arrested on Monday after he allegedly stopped his car in the middle of the road and threatened another driver while holding a knife, in the central city of Rishon Lezion.
Police said that the 20-year-old suspect, a resident of the city, was driving ahead of the 50-year-old woman when he stopped in the middle of the road, left his car, and began to verbally abuse the woman.
“I stopped so that I wouldn’t crash into him. Suddenly, he got out of his car with a long knife in his hand, knocked on my car window, and began to threaten me, saying that I don’t know how to drive,” the woman said in her complaint to the police.
“I was scared that in another moment he would stab me. After a few seconds of fear, he left, annoyed, and returned to his car and drove off,” she added.
The police will ask to extend the suspect’s remand when he appears in court on Tuesday.
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Last Wednesday, Holon resident Yuri Volkov was stabbed to death by a scooter rider during a dispute at a crosswalk in the Tel Aviv suburb. The suspect, 23-year-old Adi Mizrahi, was arrested a day after the killing.
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On Sunday evening, Mizrahi, who until then had denied that he was the culprit, confessed to killing Volkov and expressed regret for his actions.
Hours after Volkov’s funeral, a video circulated online of an incident two weeks ago showing a fight between motorists on Route 431, a major central-Israel highway, with one driver using a knife to puncture the tires of a second driver and then threatening to use the knife on him as well.
A Bat Yam man was detained by police following the incident, Israel Police said in a statement. The suspect was released after questioning, and charges were to be brought against him.
Earlier this month, a man was hospitalized after a motorcyclist beat him over the head with his helmet on a Tel Aviv highway. The 50-year-old driver was treated at the neurosurgery intensive care at the city’s Ichilov Medical Center with head injuries. His condition later improved.
The suspected attacker, Arik Greenfeld, 37, who was seen on video hitting the driver with his helmet during an altercation in the middle of rush hour traffic, claimed that he acted in self-defense and that the other driver attacked him first, punched him, and broke his teeth, Channel 13 reported.
Greenfeld has a past conviction in a hit-and-run accident that the family of the victim in that case claim led to the victim’s death a year and a half later. He also has a separate past conviction of hitting someone on the head with a motorcycle helmet, according to Hebrew media reports.
