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Follow Us on TwitterInjured Palestinian construction worker left to die on Tel Aviv street 18Sep13 September 18, 2013
Haaretz - 17 September 2013
An unauthorized Palestinian construction worker from the West Bank who was seriously injured while doing renovation work in Tel Aviv early Tuesday was left to die on the sidewalk, witnesses said.
The victim, Ahsan Abu-Satta, from Nablus, was apparently abandoned by his employer, without any attempt to assist him. The body was found lying on the sidewalk outside 7 Ben Atar Street, in south Tel Aviv by passersby, and then taken to Ichilov hospital in Tel Aviv, where he was pronounced dead.
Several eyewitnesses told Haaretz that they had seen the contractor arriving at the apartment where the renovations were being done. He noticed the laborer was apparently critically injured and, with the help of two workers, dragged the man to the sidewalk opposite and left him there, without helping him.
Hussam Faraji, a resident of Kalansua who was at the site, told Haaretz: “I’ve been working here for a long time and he’s been working in the same place for a week, for that contractor. I saw him working with a hammer and apparently something fell on him, or he was hurt, and he fell in a very serious condition. I saw the contractor running with two of his workers. He took him by the hands and the other two took him by the feet and they threw him onto the opposite sidewalk.”
Faraji said that he was not going to ignore what he had seen and appealed to the contractor to help the worker. “I told him, ‘Why are you tossing him out like a dog? Save him, help him. So what if he’s a resident of the territories?’ He locked up and fled. We summoned the ambulance, which arrived after 25 minutes.”
The contractor denied that he had dumped the man, telling Haaretz: “I gave testimony in the police station, but I wasn’t investigated. I recounted exactly what happened, which was that I was there with another person for a whole hour and we tried to resuscitate him for an hour. I’m not connected to the apartment; it isn’t mine. I told the police what I saw. It’s all nonsense.”
Faraji said that the contractor first claimed that he didn’t know the man. Afterwards, he changed his story and said that the worker had come only to offer him a price estimate, but Faraji maintains that he knows the man who was thrown into the street and that he has been working there for over a week.
A passer-by who witnessed the incident added that he had also shouted at the contractor and the workers when they threw the man onto the sidewalk. “I pass here often and he was working that day in the contractor’s apartment, I saw him in the apartment a few minutes before he died,” said the eyewitness. “When they dragged him out, I shouted to them that such things aren’t done, I didn’t believe that they would dump him and flee from the spot, I didn’t believe it was happening. People there suggested giving him water or giving them a phone to summon Magen David Adom emergency services, but the contractor locked the apartment and asked his workers to flee from there.”
The first one to offer help was Nicolas Cascallar Marquis, a Krav Maga teacher who began to resuscitate the worker. Marquis said that the worker was still alive while he was trying to resuscitate him, but in very serious condition. “I tried to revive him, but all around everyone was shouting that they had dragged him and that there had been an attempt to toss out the man without offering help. He was wearing work clothes, you could see that he was wearing dirty clothes like those of a construction worker. After we tried to revive him and to remove the liquids from his mouth we realized that we were losing him and then the Magen David Adom people arrived.”
A policeman who lives in the neighborhood summoned the contractor, who returned to the scene.
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