Mother of Gay Pride Parade Stabber Speaks to Victim’s Family
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The mother of the man who stabbed six marchers in the annual Jerusalem Gay Pride parade said she regrets her son’s actions.
“We think it’s really a great tragedy, we regret it very much and pray for the recovery of the wounded,” Rivka Schlissel told family members of Shira Banki, 16, who died of her wounds three days after the attack, during a meeting in the studio of the Walla! news website, it reported.
Yishai Schlissel, a haredi Orthodox man from Modiin Ilit in the West Bank, remains in police custody after being deemed psychologically fit to stand trial. Schlissel had been released from prison three weeks earlier after serving 10 years for a similar attack at Jerusalem’s 2005 gay pride parade.
Schlissel’s family and members of his haredi community, remain under investigation by the Jerusalem District Police, who are working to discover whether others knew of his intention to attack marchers in the parade, according to Walla. Investigators also are checking calls made to and from his cell phone in the days leading up to the attack.
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