Police believe Tel Aviv shooter Nashet Melham disabled the camera inside the cab he hailed after his attack on a Dizengoff pub last Friday, according to a report Thursday by Channel 10 television news.
Melham, an Israeli Arab, apparently shot and killed Ayman Sha’aban when the driver, an Israeli Bedouin, refused to cooperate with his passenger’s orders to avoid a police checkpoint.
Investigators who found the abandoned taxi and Sha’aban’s body near the Glilot interchange also discovered the camera. They said the trip with Melham was not recorded: a clear sign the camera had been tampered with, probably before he murdered the driver.
Up to this point police have been circumspect in the information they release to the public about the investigation.
However, the demands of Sha’aban’s family to release footage of his murder seem to have resulted in their willingness to share the events in the cab.
Nearly all of Melhem’s family members, with the exception of his mother, have been arrested as accessories to the attack in which he killed two and wounded eight at the Simta pub. Melhem’s parents live in Ar’ara, in the northern Israeli area of Wadi Ara.
Included among those arrested is Melhem’s father Muhammed, a volunteer police officer. The elder Melhem identified his son as the perpetrator when he saw a video of the attack on television over the weekend, and who publicly pleaded with his son to turn himself in.
It was his father’s service weapon that Nashet Melhem stole and used to carry out his murderous attacks.