Rehovot Youth Convicted for 2005 Rape, Murder

The Tel Aviv District Court convicted a 17-year-old on Thursday for the 2005 murder of 15-year-old Ma'ayan Sapir from Rehovot, who was raped and killed on her way to a shopping mall.

The murderer, who was 16 at the time, confessed to police after being arrested that he was under the influence of drugs and alcohol. He had already amassed a long sheet of petty criminal offenses prior to the murder and was on furlough over the weekend he murdered Sapir.

According to the indictment, the teenager met Sapir on her way to the mall, knocked her violently to the ground and dragged her into the empty schoolyard. He then raped, sodomized and strangled her. The suspect, according to the charge sheet, then fled the scene of the murder and disposed of Sapir's clothing in a nearby alley. He was arrested shortly after the murder and was found to have been under the influence of glue fumes and alcohol.

'She [Ma'ayan] didn't do anything to that piece of trash, ' Sapir's mother told reporters last year after the youth was indicted. 'He needs to go to jail forever and what he did is just as bad as what Yigal Amir [Yitzhak Rabin's assassin] did.

'I did not only lose a daughter,' Sarah Sapir continued, choking on her words. 'But each and every one of you lost a great person. She would have achieved greatness.'

Source: Yaakov Katz. Youth convicted for 2005 rape, murder. JPost.com (9 Nov 2006) [FullText]