Eleven days have passed since Eldar Yitzhak Dayan, 23, of Dimona, was last seen, and police increasingly believe his disappearance may not be a routine missing-person case.
Two of his friends have been arrested, while a car belonging to the mother of one of them was found with a shattered window and bloodstains. Investigators are examining several possibilities, including whether the men were involved in a hit-and-run.
Dayan’s mother, Shilat, said her son left Dimona with a friend but never returned home.
At midday on July 16, he sent his girlfriend a WhatsApp message: “Listen, baby, there’s trouble. I’ll be heading back to the city soon. We’ll talk when I arrive.”
He also spoke with his sister shortly afterward. From that point on, however, no member of the family heard from him. His relatives said his phone has remained unavailable and there has been no sign of life.
According to the family, the last place Dayan was known to have visited was the Yarkon Park area in Tel Aviv on July 17. A police missing-person notice also said he was last seen there.
His mother said the friend who traveled with him claimed the two continued from the park to a nearby Paz gas station, where they separated.
“That was where he said they split up,” she said. “Why did they split up? God knows.”
At 5 p.m. the following day, July 18, Petah Tikva police received a report of an abandoned car near a gas station. Witnesses reportedly saw suspects leave the vehicle, remove its license plate and flee.
Police said officers arrived quickly, found a shattered window and bloodstains and later contacted the car’s owner.
The owner said her son, who had been driving the vehicle, had not been home for several days. Police said that when they managed to reach him, he told them he was on his way to Dimona and would report to the police station there.
He never arrived.
The car was later towed from the gas station to the location where it was found more than a week afterward. It remains unclear why the investigation did not advance during the intervening days.
Meanwhile, Dayan’s family was trying to understand where he was but had yet to file a missing-person report.
Eldar Dayan’s car, found in Petah Tikva
(Photo: Israel Police)
His mother said relatives initially did not realize he was missing. The family decided to contact police only after his grandmother noticed that he had not returned home and could not be reached.
“His grandmother told us she had filed a report because he was missing, had not returned home and was unavailable,” Shilat said.
Dayan’s sister, Lian, said the report was filed only on Friday, July 24, partly because the family initially believed his phone had been lost or damaged.
Shilat said the account given by the friend who traveled with Dayan from Dimona to central Israel changed several times.
“He keeps changing his story, and we don’t know,” she said. “There is no lead. Nothing. We don’t know what happened.”
The investigation shifted Monday night, less than 24 hours after police first publicly announced that Dayan was missing.
Two of his friends, including the man whose mother owned the car found with the shattered window, were summoned to the Dimona police station to give testimony and were then arrested on suspicion of obstructing the investigation.
The two Dimona residents were due to appear Tuesday before the Be’er Sheva Magistrate’s Court for a remand hearing.
Each friend gave investigators a different account. One said they had been beaten, apparently by strangers, while the other denied that any such assault occurred.
Police said they were investigating every possible direction.
“This is not a routine missing-person case,” a police source said. “We are examining possible hit-and-run scenarios and checking whether there were incidents in which people were hospitalized in central Israel or Tel Aviv. Everything is on the table.”