Israeli prosecutors on Tuesday filed an indictment in Haifa District Court against 43-year-old Samid Jaghaja of Ara, accusing him of murdering his daughter, Laila, with indifference after a family argument escalated into gunfire. The State Attorney’s Office said the deadly incident began after a dispute among children, when Jaghaja’s sister criticized his son’s behavior and the argument spread through the family.
According to the indictment, after relatives tried unsuccessfully to calm the situation, Jaghaja went into his house, took an illegally held handgun, and fired at least eight shots from inside the home toward a stone wall with a window facing the yard. Family members were outside at the time. One bullet struck Laila in the head while she was in the yard. She was taken to hospital, where she was pronounced dead shortly afterward.
The charges include murder by indifference, weapons offenses, firing in a residential area, threats, and obstruction of justice. The indictment was filed by attorney Yossi Gimpel of the Haifa District Prosecutor’s Office.
Prosecutors also said that about two weeks before the killing, following a quarrel between Jaghaja’s son and his brother, he went to his brother’s home armed with a handgun, threatened him, and fired several shots into the air in a residential area. In their detention request, prosecutors said Jaghaja poses an exceptionally high danger, arguing that he used a gun repeatedly to resolve ordinary family disputes and that hiding the weapon after the killing, together with fears of witness tampering among relatives, means he should remain in custody until the end of proceedings.
