Muni Savyon, 54, of Manchester, NH, took out a handgun and shot 9-year-old Joshua of Amherst before shooting himself, around 10 AM, Sunday, the attorney general’s office said.
The father sent an email to a friend saying he was suicidal before the shootings, said Rabbi Levi Krinsky of Chabad Lubavitch of Manchester, who said he knew Savyon. Krinsky said Savyon had been depressed after returning from his brother’s funeral in Israel.
“There’s a lot of sadness and also anger on the part of everyone involved that a father would take his son’s life for no other reason than apparently to spite his mother,” New Hampshire Assistant Attorney General Jeffery Strelzin told the Boston Herald.
Muni Savyon had made threats about a year ago to harm himself, his ex-girlfriend and their 9-year-old boy, Joshua Savyon, Strelzin said.
The social worker who was present at the father’s supervised visit with his son was not harmed during the attack, which was captured on video after the boy’s mother had dropped him off. Strelzin said supervised visits are often held at the YMCA, which sometimes uses a metal detector to screen parents, but did not do so yesterday. He said no one suspected Savyon was capable of violence.
Ellen Vig of Billerica, Sayvon’s ex-wife—not the mother of his child—said she has a copy of the letter, written in Hebrew.
“It was his intentions. What he wanted to do with his property,” she told the Boston Herald. “It’s a suicide note.”
Savyon was active in Libertarian causes, Vig said, and was a twice-defeated candidate for the New Hampshire legislature, most recently in February.
“Please keep the Savyon family in your thoughts and prayers as they cope with the unimaginable,” Rep. Peter King, who easily beat Savyon in a special election for the New Hampshire House of Representatives, said from his Twitter account.
Born in Israel, Savyon was a naturalized citizen who lived in several Western states before coming to New England, where he worked as a software engineer, Vig said.