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Police search for missing mom intensifies; ex-con boyfriend arrested

The suspect is reportedly one of the Arab Israeli men who recently filmed themselves rampaging through a local kibbutz, has an extensive criminal history.

By World Israel News Staff

Police ramped up their search for a missing Israeli mother of two over the weekend, using a helicopter and tracking dogs in wooded areas near Akko, where she was last seen.

Twenty-three-year-old Sapir Nachum, the mother of a two-year-old toddler and an eight month old baby, left her apartment in the northern Israeli city to drop her older child off at daycare on Thursday morning, but never returned home.

Nachum’s sister, Eden, told Ynet that the missing woman has been involved in a long-standing financial dispute with the father of her two children.

She said that the pair had an on-again, off-again relationship, and that they were planning to meet with an attorney to resolve their financial issues in the near future.

“I did not like the relationship between the two of them, and I opposed it,” she said. “I did not know they were back together…lately, they have been fighting because he did not pay child support.”

Nachum’s boyfriend, whose name has not been released by authorities, is an ex-convict with a lengthy criminal history who served some 12 years in prison, according to Eden.

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Ynet reported that her boyfriend was one of the Arab-Israeli men who recently filmed themselves a rampaging through a kibbutz on horse-drawn vehicles, in a video which went viral on TikTok and led to a police investigation.

The man was arrested early Friday morning, several hours after Nachum was reported missing. According to her family, she left her cell phone at home when taking her toddler to daycare, and it was highly out of character for her to disappear for this length of time.

Surveillance footage from Thursday morning revealed that Nachum got into a car belonging to her boyfriend. Police did not say if the video provided them with any leads into Nachum’s current location or her fate.

In a statement made via his attorney, the boyfriend maintained his innocence and denied that he was involved in Nachum’s disappearance.

Akko police said in a statement that they are using all the resources at their disposal to locate Nachum and urged anyone with knowledge about her disappearance or whereabouts to come forward and share that information.