Mandelblit Closes Case of Teen Death in Police Car Chase

Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit announced his decision on Thursday to close the investigation into the death of a teenager in a car crash while fleeing police in Yehuda and Shomron on December 21, citing lack of clear evidence of culpability.

Ahuvia Sandak, 16, was killed when his car collided with a cruiser during a high-speed chase by police, who sought to detain him after allegedly after throwing rocks at Palestinians.

The investigation was conducted to determine whether police either accidentally collided with his car or deliberately tried to force his car to stop, thereby causing the fatal outcome.

Mandelblit said that “it’s impossible to say which of the cars swerved and caused the crash while trying to go around,” on the winding highway.

He concluded that the evidence did not clearly support either narrative, but it was clear that Sandak and his fellow activists were dangerously breaking the law by fleeing arrest in a high-speed chase.

The Attorney General’s office released video footage from momentarily before the crash, which showed Sandak’s Subaru seen racing on the wrong side of the curvy mountain road, followed by an unmarked police car and met by another coming in the opposite direction.

The video also appears to show one of the police cars speeding down the wrong side of the road and nearly running into a truck coming the other way.

A lawyer for a senior police official said Sandak’s death was a tragedy but the case being closed is proof that there was no criminal wrongdoing, according to The Times of Israel.

The case has been a highly contentious one from the start, marked by protest rallies and accusations of a police coverup, and continued to be after Mandelblit’s decision on Thursday.

“For a whole year we’ve been fighting for justice for Ahuvia and an end to the baseless hatred that’s killing us,” Sandak’s father said in reaction, according to Now 14.

Gush Etzion Regional Council Head Shlomo Ne’eman decried the decision: “With every accident and mishap, there are those at fault. For every wounded terrorist, you’ll find a soldier who undergoes interrogation. Every workplace irregularity ends with someone getting fired. Every State investigation ends with criminal cases. And only when there is a grave of a boy in the Kfar Etzion cemetery, somehow there are no guilty parties or suspects.

“The blood of a Jewish boy, a son of Bat Ayin in Gush Etzion, is worthless. And that is an abandonment by the government,” he said in a statement.

Far-right MK Itamar Ben Gvir called it a “black day for democracy.”

There was condemnation on the left, as well, as Meretz MK Mossi Raz tweeted: “this is what whitewashing looks like,” and branding the decision “ridiculous.”

“A kid was killed after being struck by a police car and nobody will face justice,” he writes.

Much of the controversy swirled around the method of the probe.

Representing the Sandak family and the other youth involved in the incident, Honenu had argued that the matter should be handled by the Police Investigations Department (PID), the unit normally tasked with probing allegations of police misconduct.

They contended that involving the Yerushalayim District of the police was an attempt to cover up misconduct and deflect blame on Sandak and his friends.

However, a three-justice panel of the High Court backed the decision to have two separate divisions of law enforcement review the case.