Reports: Body found in Israel is missing U.S. student

USA Today – by Oren Dorell

Israeli police say they have found the body of an American student who went missing last week while hiking and that they do not suspect a crime was involved, media reports say.

Reuters and Israeli media Haaeretz and Jerusalem Post reported that the body of Aaron Sofer, 23, a Jewish seminary student from New Jersey, had been positively identified after being found earlier in the day. He vanished last Friday while walking in woods not far from the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum in Jerusalem.  

“Following a forensic examination, the body … was identified as that of missing person Aaron Sofer. Tests showed that no criminal act was committed and the body will be transferred to the family in the coming hours,” police said in a statement, Reuters reported.

No further details on the circumstances of death were disclosed immediately.

The Jerusalem Post reported that DNA tests confirmed the identity.

The body was found earlier Thursday, and police said initially that it appeared likely to be that of the missing American.

“There is a strong possibility” that the body is Sofer,, said police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld, according to The Jerusalem Post. He said at the time that a forensic team was working to confirm the identity and cause of death.

Meir Lichtenstein, a Lakewood, N.J., committeeman and friend of the Sofer family, told reporters the family believes the death was accidental.

Sofer was “not the most experienced hiker” and may have had an “accident related to his walking in a rough terrain,” Lichtenstein said, according to CNN.

The body was found a few miles from where the body of Palestinian teen Mohammed Abu Khdeir, 16, was found July 2. Three Israelis were arrested in that slaying, which authorities have said was a revenge murder for the kidnap and killing of three Israeli teens in June.

Abu Khdeir’s killing, and Israel’s crackdown on Hamas, whose leaders later admitted ordering the kidnap and murder of the Israeli teens, prompted 50 days of rocket attacks and cross-border incursions between Israel and Hamas that ended with a cease-fire Tuesday. That conflict left 2,143 Palestinians dead, according to Palestinian health officials and U.N. officials. On the Israeli side, 64 soldiers, five civilians and a Thai worker were killed.

One of the first people to arrive at the site of the body — which was found Thursday — was Yisrael Erlich, a United Hatzalah worker, who said the body closely matched the description of the red-headed student who spent the past year studying in Jerusalem.

“Soon after beginning our search we came across a man’s body among the shrubbery that seemed to match the missing student’s description,” Erlich said, according to Israel’s Arutz Sheva TV.

Religious news site Beharei Haredim reported that a suit and hat matching Sofer’s clothing when he went missing were found nearby.

The Lakewood Scoop, a Jewish publication from Sofer’s hometown in New Jersey, cited an unnamed Israeli source saying it appears the victim fell down a cliff, and that the death does not appear terror-related.

Contributing: William M. Welch in Los Angeles

http://www.usatoday.com/story/news/world/2014/08/28/body-found-israel-matches-missing-american-hiker/14751197/