Accident or assault? Dispute over Yeshiva student’s injury

This article is in regards to the recent posting requsting readers say Tehilim

Sydney, Australia — Was it an assault or an accident? That’s the contested question regarding Nitzan Zerach, an Israeli-born student at Sydney’s Yeshiva Centre who was hospitalised last Thursday with a brain haemorrhage and facial injuries.

His condition is stable and he is recovering in hospital.

But close friends and Yeshiva officials are disputing a police report that his injuries were the result of an accident, and that he was probably intoxicated at the time. They believe he was assaulted.

Zerach, one of about 35 overseas students studying at the Bondi centre, was found lying in Flood Street in the early hours of last Thursday morning. An ambulance was called and paramedics returned him to the Yeshiva Centre at around 2am, where video footage captured him stumbling into the building.

At about 11am the following morning, Yanky Levy, a fellow student, saw him wandering around the building dazed, and informed senior Yeshiva staff.

They called Hatzolah, the Jewish emergency response unit, who arrived on the scene, gave him oxygen and immobilised his head.

An ambulance was called just before 1pm on Thursday and he was taken to St Vincent’s Hospital, where he was operated on.

Police spent most of Thursday afternoon investigating the incident and interviewing students at the Yeshiva Centre.
They concluded that there was no evidence of assault and that it was “most likely the result of a fall”.

“At this stage we believe he was possibly intensely intoxicated,” a police spokesman told the AJN. “It looks to be a case of a drunken accident. There is no evidence of an assault.”

He said the ambulance staff believed Zerach “reeked of alcohol” and that he must have lost his footing as he was attempting to reach the dormitories behind the Yeshiva Centre.

He added that police found three bottles of “almost empty” whisky in Zerach’s room.

“Why would you keep three bottles of almost empty bottles of Scotch above your bed if you don’t drink Scotch?”

Zerach, who sustained a heavy blow to his head, recalls nothing after he closed the Chabad house for Israelis in Bondi Beach at around 11.30pm last Wednesday evening. His mother Leah and brother Guy arrived from Israel over the weekend.

A furious Rabbi Alon Hazi, who runs the Israeli Chabad house where Zerach volunteered, said he had no doubt it was an assault.

He said Zerach’s bag had been found at Anzac Bridge and that the student was not an alcohol drinker. “We know 99 per cent he was hit by somebody. In fact it wasn’t by hand — he was hit by something stronger.”

Mendy Litzman, of Hatzolah Sydney, arrived at Yeshiva on Thursday lunchtime when the alarm was first raised.

“The first thing that entered our mind was an assault because he had a black eye and blood on his nose,” he said.

Paramedics treated it as a “serious assault”, he added.

Litzman said there was a fabrengen, a Lubavitch customary l’chaim where everybody has a drink, last Wednesday night, but Zerach did not attend.

Rabbi Sholom Feldman, also of the Yeshivah Centre, told the AJN he believed Zerach was injured by the time he entered the Orthodox centre.

“He’s lucky to be alive — it’s a miracle. If he didn’t stand up and wander around [on Thursday morning], he may have died.”

He also disputed allegations of alcoholism. “Which bochur wearing a [black] hat and jacket would walk into a bar? I think he was beaten to a pulp.”

As to the whisky bottles in his room, he said that police don’t understand the Chabad custom of saying a l’chaim at every special gathering, including Shabbat. “A bochur has alcohol from the many farbrengens,” he said.

“The empty ones that were found were consumed prior to that day. He did not drink from those bottles.”

He also questioned why the ambulance staff left Zerach at the Yeshiva Centre and did not help him inside.

“I just don’t understand it. He was obviously injured and the ambulance [staff] did not hand him over to anyone.”

But the police spokesman said that Zerach used the keypad to enter the compound, which proves he had “some cognitive ability”.

He added that ambulance staff who originally treated Zerach did not find any injuries.

“There’s nothing to suggest he was assaulted. It’s more consistent with a fall. We work on the basis of evidence and there’s no evidence to suggest an assault,” he said.