A 32-year-old volunteer policeman, Hussam Zjeyer Mirka, was killed, and a regular policeman, Amir Abu Rish, was seriously wounded during a routine call to check on reports of noisy construction in the city of Nahariya during the Sukkot holiday, on Tuesday morning. Both policemen are from the Druze village of Yarka.
The policemen arrived at the construction site that was working on anti-flooding infrastructure for the city. The site was supposed to be shut down during the holiday, but the policemen discovered an entire crew of workers working at the site.
While confronting them, the policemen were reportedly punched by the foreman, who then got into his car with another worker, and ran them over twice, before fleeing the scene.
The foreman at the site is an Israeli-Arab from Sakhnin, but 11 of the workers turned out to be Palestinian Authority Arabs from the village of Yatta, south of Hebron, and apparently illegally in pre-67 Israel during the holiday.
Police managed to capture the driver and worker a few hours later. The driver claimed he didn’t realize he hit anyone.
Police said they do not believe the motive of the hit-and-run driver was terror.
Hussam Zjeyer Mirka had volunteered to work that day, so that a Jewish police officer could have the day off to celebrate Sukkot with his family.