Arab raped girl in Tel Aviv, and Arab couple murdered elderly woman for money

Two sad police blotter cases to report. In the first one, it appears an Arab raped a Jewish girl in Tel Aviv:

Police believe a rape suspect who launched a vicious assault on a young couple in Tel Aviv is from the Arab community, senior law enforcement sources said Sunday.

The knife-wielding suspect assaulted an 18-year-old man and his 17-year-old girlfriend at the Gan HaIr parking lot near the Tel Aviv Municipality, forcing them to carry out sexual acts with one another, before raping the woman in a bathroom stall early on Saturday.

The decision to focus the search on an Arab suspect is based on the eyewitness testimonies of the couple, who described their attacker as having a Middle Eastern appearance and speaking with an Arabic accent, police sources said Sunday.

And in the second one, an older case has been solved:

An elderly woman who was choked to death in her Jaffa home in 2010 was murdered by a Palestinian man with the assistance of his divorcee in order to steal money for rent, police in Tel Aviv said Sunday.

Shoshana Levi, 78, was found bound and without vital life signs in her home by paramedics.

Subsequent examinations found that her attackers had shoved cloths and a tennis ball into her mouth, leading to asphyxiation.

The investigation was led by the elite central unit of Tel Aviv district police, which gathered DNA and forensic evidence from the murder scene.

Dep.-Cmdr. Gadi Asher, head of the unit, said Sunday that detectives were unable to use the DNA evidence at first, as they had no other sample to compare it to. The investigation hit an initial dead end.

Nevertheless, police continued working on the case, and going on the assumption that the attackers did not break in to the home, but rather, were acquainted with the murder victim.

Then, in March, homicide detectives focused on a Palestinian woman, Samar Abu Khamed, who visited Levi two weeks before the murder. The woman has several relatives who reside in the Kalkiliya area of the West Bank.

Police proceeded to secretly take DNA samples from all of Khamed's relatives by arranging for them to visit police stations and government offices, and placing them in situations in which they would leave DNA behind, such as offering them a glass of water.

In April, the investigation reached a breakthrough, Asher said, when a DNA match was found between Ahser's ex-husband, Omar Koran. A Border Police unit raided the suspects' home and arrested the two suspects, as well as five relatives who are suspected of assisting them.

The main murder suspects, Samer Abu Khamed and Omar Koran, confessed during questioning to carrying out the murder and robbery, saying they had run out of money to pay rent, police said.

All culprits in these cases should be locked in solitary confinement for the rest of their undeserved lives.

Update: a suspect has been arrested in connection with the first case.