49-year-old man suspected of premeditated murder of teenage girl

• Published date: 03 October 2021
• Author: SHIRA SILKOFF
• Publication title: Jerusalem Post, The: Web Edition Articles (Israel)

The girl was first reported missing by her grandmother on Friday after she failed to return home to Or Akiva from the boarding school in the south of the country which she had started attending just last week.

Melnik's grandmother acted as her legal guardian, and her parents do not reside in Israel, KAN News reported.

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Her body was found in Kiryat Motzkin on Saturday morning after a passerby contacted the police to report suspicious activity, and what looked like a freshly dug pit, at a construction site near a municipal park. Upon their arrival to the scene, police found a partially buried body which they later confirmed to be the missing teenager.

When reporting her disappearance, Melnik's grandmother gave police the name of a 49-year-old man from Kiryat Motzkin with whom the girl had shared a romantic relationship.

The suspect was employed as a nurse in a psychiatric ward in Tirat Hacarmel near Haifa, and it is there that the two are thought to have first met, as she was hospitalized there at the same time as he was employed.

During the police investigation into the murder, the suspect allegedly stated, according to N12, that Melnik's grandmother had issued a restraining order against him once in the past.

Walla journalist Yoav Etiel reported via Twitter that police officers arrived at the man's apartment on Friday night in order to question him about the girl's disappearance, but found that he was not home. After the body was discovered on Saturday...