'I don't know what will happen to me and the children'

Hundreds of family members, friends and acquaintances attended the funeral of Yotam Ovadia, 31, murdered by a Palestinian terrorist in a stabbing attack on Thursday night. Yotam was buried at Har Hamenuchot cemetery in Jerusalem, leaving two young children, Harel and Itai, and his wife Tal.

“I don’t know what will happen to me and the children now,” Tal said Saturday, as quoted by Ynet.

“I don’t know how to continue to be strong for the children. We were everything to him. The house was his kingdom.”

“Yotam was a decent, modest and humble man of work,” she said.” He loved me and the children in a way I never saw. All he did was just for us. He always made sure he was good. Always puts himself last.”

Tal added that on the day he was murdered, Yotam had come from work with a bouquet of flowers and chocolates for her.

“After I put the children to bed, he went to fetch the groceries from his parents, but he did not get to them, “she said. “He fulfilled every dream. I always said to him, ‘You are the one, the only one, and my special one.’”

A security source told the bereaved family that Yotam fought with the terrorist and thus delayed him and prevented him from entering the homes and the playground adjacent to the area of the attack.

Asaf Ravid, the wounded man who eliminated the terrorist, reconstructed the moments of terror:

“I went out for a bike ride and in my bag there is always a pistol. I heard shouts, and then the terrorist appeared in front of me. Within two seconds, he took out a knife from his pocket and stabbed me in the shoulder. I fled from him, and during the flight, I took the pistol out of my bag, and he was standing near me. He realized he had no chance. I shot him once and he kept approaching, and then I fired two more times and he fell.”

The commander of the local police station in Adam, Eli Ovadia, is Yotam’s cousin.

“I was prepared to leave my house for the scene of the attack.  I gave orders to my officers,” recounted Ovadia. “At this point I had not yet spoken to my uncle and aunt. As I got closer to the scene I realize that it was the street where Yotam’s father and mother, Avraham and Carmela, live.

“I did not want to believe it had anything to do with them. But when I arrived, I was told that it was Yotam. It was a shock. I was in shock. I was devastated. My stomach felt as though it was torn apart.”