The Israel Police were successful in capturing an Arab car thief who attempted to ram them at a security checkpoint about three weeks ago.
The police stated on Sunday that on July 29, officers from the Ariel in Samaria station carried out an operation to locate stolen vehicles. At some point, a vehicle drove toward the checkpoint and raised the suspicion of the police officers who signaled it to stop.
When the suspect approached the policemen he accelerated and endangered the life of one of the policemen who had to avoid the vehicle traveling in his direction. The police officer carried out a suspect arrest procedure, but the suspect managed to escape while hitting the police car that was standing in his way.
Following the escape, the police launched an investigation during which many operations were carried out to locate the suspect.
On Saturday, “the circle was closed” when the suspect’s location was located at the Hares intersection in Samaria. The police arrived at the scene and arrested the suspect.
The 33-year-old suspect, a resident of the village of Qabalan in the Palestinian Authority (PA), is suspected in other cases of vehicle theft from different places in Israel. The investigation into his case continues.
“The Israel Police will continue its determined and uncompromising fight against gangs of car thieves who try to harm the safety and property of the residents, with the aim of exposing the truth and bringing those involved to justice,” it stated.
Arab car thieves from the PA have recently been involved in several lethal incidents.
An Israeli was killed on August 10 while driving in Samaria when an Arab car thief wildly driving a stolen car collided with his car.
An Arab car thief ran over and killed an Israeli policeman as he ran through a police checkpoint on July 16.
A report published by the Knesset’s Research and Information Center in June depicts a chaotic state on the roads of Judea and Samaria, citing minimal police enforcement, neglected infrastructure, and a lack of supervision of the vehicles driven by Arabs from the PA on the road.
One basic problem concerns the fact that accident data involving drivers from the PA is not transferred from the police to the Central Bureau of Statistics, and in any case not to the National Road Safety Authority. Underestimation of the accident data affects the definition of red roads that require increased enforcement, and also the definition of risk points which require the allocation of resources to repair the safety hazards.
