NOVANEWS
Karina Brill has told police she stabbed her children and attempted suicide two hours before a social worker was scheduled to visit.
Haaretz
A Jerusalem woman accused of cutting the throats of her two young children with a kitchen knife was charged with murder Sunday.
Karina Brill, who moved from the Ukraine to Israel with her children in April, has told police she killed her son, Igor, 8, and her daugher, Mira, 6, on the morning of September 16. The murders took place two hours before a social worker was scheduled to visit.
Brill’s sister, Nadia Levitt, was staying at the apartment in Jerusalem’s Talpiot neighborhood and attempted to stop the assault, but Brill allegedly locked her out of the apartment before she could do so. Brill, 36, cut her wrists but survived the suicide attempt.
“The whole time [since moving to Israel] the accused has undergone serious hardship, including hardship connected to absorption [into Israeli society] and adaptation to life in Israel,” states the charge sheet.
The September attack wasn’t the first time the single mother attempted to harm herself or her children, according to prosecutors.
A counselor at the ulpan where Igor was learning Hebrew noticed that he was injured and referred Brill to social services over the summer. And on Rosh Hashanah, slightly more than a week before the double murder, Brill tried unsuccessfully to cut her own throat.
A few days later she showed the wound to a friend and asked for help, prosecutors say. The friend called social services, and a social worker made an appointment to visit the Brill home at 9 A.M. the morning of the murders. Brill was angry at her friend and feared her children would be removed from her care.
Levitt came for a visit the evening of September 15 and decided to stay for the night when she saw that her sister appeared unstable. At 7 A.M. Brill came out of the bedroom she was sharing with her sister for the night and, prosecutors say, got a large knife from the kitchen.
She cut her own wrists, “and then turned to the bedroom where the children were sleeping in a bunk bed,” the charge sheet states. She stands accused of cutting the throat of her daughter, ignoring her cries.
Mira was still alive when Brill moved on to Igor’s bed, where she cut her son’s throat, prosecutors say.
Hearing the children’s screams, Levitt went into their room and tried to stop her sister, but Brill pushed Levitt out of the house and locked the door, according to the indictment. Then Brill stabbed her daughter again, the indictment states.
Both children were pronounced dead on the scene when paramedics arrived shortly after 7 A.M.
Brill collapsed and was treated at Jerusalem’s Hadassah University Hospital, Ein Karem.
