(JNi.media) The Nazareth District Court on Wednesday convicted taxi driver Hussein Khalifa of the murder of the late Shelly Dadon, 19, two years ago. “Regarding the question at the opening of our decision, namely who is the cowardly murderer who killed Shelly in the prime of her life, the answer is clear and unequivocal: the defendant before us is the killer,” the judges wrote in their unanimous verdict.
Shelly Dadon was an Israeli girl from the town of Afula who was murdered on May 1, 2014, on her way to a job interview. Her body was discovered by police the following day, in Ramat Gavriel, an industrial area in the town of Migdal Ha’Emek. Dadon’s body was dumped near the location where the body of Yafim Weinstein, a Jewish taxi driver from Upper Nazareth, was found, on November 30, 2009.
On June 16, 2014, police arrested 36-year-old taxi driver Hussein Khalifa, from the town of Ibillin, in Galilee, who confessed to having driven Dadon to the industrial park and to stabbing her to death. On July 9, 2014, Khalifa was indicted for the murder. According to the indictment, “Dadon struggled to escape and even scratched Khalifa, but was not physically strong enough to get away.”
Referring to the defendant’s later denial of the charges against him, the judges held that the “fabric of evidence suggests the accused is guilty of the charges beyond reasonable doubt.”
The judges’ ruling stated that “the defendant, instead driving Shelly to her job interview, took her to an abandoned parking lot, came out, pulled out a long knife and stabbed and slashed the late victim seventeen times.”
The judges referred to the defendant’s claims that Dadon “insulted him,” writing that “even if the deceased had said insulting things to the defendant, that in itself did not pack such a powerful explosion which deprived him suddenly and spontaneously of all self-control and led him to perform the act of killing without the ability to think and understand the consequences of his actions.”
The court sentenced Khlaifa to life in prison, adding a compensation payment he must make to the estate of the deceased in the amount of $67,000.
