Arbel Feldman named as Rishon Lezion torts lawyer allegedly shot dead by client

The Rishon Lezion attorney allegedly killed by a disgruntled client was identified on Wednesday as torts lawyer Arbel Feldman.

Feldman, who was shot dead in his office on Tuesday, is survived by a wife and three children, according to Hebrew media. He was about 50 years old, according to medics.

“He is the last person on the list to whom something like this could happen. It’s impossible to believe it is happening,” an unnamed relative told the Ynet news site.

The Israeli Bar Association (IBA) observed a moment of silence on Wednesday in Feldman’s memory. A message to members called on attorneys across the country to exit courthouses at 10 a.m. and stand in silence for two minutes.

“This is a jarring incident that requires a change in decision-makers’ approach to the violence that is wreaking havoc in Israeli society,” the bar said.

It announced that IBA head Amit Becher and district heads have formed a team to assist threatened lawyers and help lawyers “identify threatening situations and safely separate from violent clients.”

The disgruntled client, a Ramle resident in his 20s, had turned himself in at the Lachish regional police station hours after the shooting, police said.

The Kan public broadcaster reported that the suspect refused to surrender the handgun he used in the shooting, and was silent during his interrogation.

It is unclear if the suspect was a registered gun owner.

Sources involved in the probe told the Walla news site that the two argued over a torts case of around NIS 10,000 ($3,300) in which Feldman represented the alleged shooter.

A neighboring lawyer saw a “client familiar to him” enter the victim’s office at about 1 p.m., and then heard yelling followed by “at least four gunshots,” Police Central District Commander Superintendent Amir Cohen told reporters at the scene while the manhunt was still underway.

Medics pronounced the lawyer dead at the scene, according to the Magen David Adom ambulance service.

Cohen said that the killer was apparently “unhappy with the service he received” from the victim.

“The identity of the murderer is known to us,” and he has a record of “lesser priors” including property and firearms offenses that had not suggested “his capacity for murder,” Cohen said.

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