'We tried to prevent lynch'
Policeman recounts failed attempt to control scene following attack; 9 policemen injured in incident and riots that followed
Eitan Ohana, one of the policemen who first arrived at the scene of the terror attack in Shfaram, attempted to defend the gunman, Eden Natan Zada, before an angry mob killed him.
Ohana spent 45 minutes onboard the bus, after which he was injured. “I was hit on the head by an object thrown at me. It wasn’t clear to me whether it was a rock or something else. I was treated at the Rambam hospital.”
An additional nine policemen were injured while attempting to protect Zada, and in the riots that followed the terror attack.
“When a terrorist attack takes place, we have to check whether there are any explosive devices or grenades in the area, and neutralize them if we find them. In this case we quickly realized that no explosives were involved, and then we switched our roles to normal police duties, doing what we could to help,” said Ohana.
Ohana told Ynet that Zada was alive when he protected him.
“This was a difficult incident. When we arrived, the gunman was lying on the ground, and we did everything to prevent the people around the bus from bursting in and harming him.
I estimate that there were hundreds there. We had to run from window to window to move people back from the bus. They tried to enter and we pushed them back out,” recounted Ohana.
Hundreds of worried family members waited at the Rambam hospital in Haifa, while the victims of the Shfaram attack were in the operation theater. Mustafa Ba’adiya, father of 21 year-old Seavan, told how his daughter was on her way home from the Technion Institute (in Haifa), where she is studying civilian engineering.
‘He aimed the gun at my head’
“We were at home, when we suddenly got a call where we were told that there was a terror attack in Shfaram, and our daughter was injured in hospital in Haifa. We rushed over to here, our daughter didn’t tell us much. All she said was that the man aimed a gun at her head. She said it again and again, ‘he aimed a gun at my head, he aimed a gun at my head,’” said Mustafa.
The first paramedic to reach the area said he was there by chance, responding to a false report on an accident. “Although we got there shortly after the incident, there were already hundreds of people in the area, and we could barely move.
We immediately opened the doors of the ambulance and took in three injured people, including a man who suffered burns on his hands. He said that he had been holding the gun while fighting with the gunman, thereby sustaining the burns,” he said.
