Bus driver handed 15-month jail sentence over fatal 2019 accident during IDF tryout

A court sentenced a bus driver to 15 months in jail Sunday over a deadly accident in 2019, in which an 18-year-old recruit was killed during a tryout for the Israel Defense Forces’ Paratroopers Brigade.

Ron Oved was killed and five others were injured when a bus rolled into his tent during the tryout on April 11, 2019. The bus was parked on an incline above the tents in which the recruits were sleeping, in a clear violation of IDF protocol.

The bus driver, Ibrahim Abu Kaf, who had been charged with negligent manslaughter, was sentenced on Sunday to 15 months in jail, as well as having his license revoked for 10 years, after reaching a plea deal with prosecutors.

According to Abu Kaf’s confession, he left the bus unattended for a short while, without activating a brakes system.

The sentence was handed down by the Ashdod Traffic Magistrate’s Court.

Moti Oved, Ron’s father, criticized the sentence and decried the “worthless justice system.”

“I have a hard time understanding why the judge dragged it out for four years, just to reach such a worthless plea agreement. This is a driver who confessed; you don’t need to investigate so deeply to understand what happened,” he told the Kan public broadcaster.

The military’s initial investigation, which was completed within two months, blamed Oved’s death squarely on the bus driver and the company that hired him, deeming the incident a vehicular accident rather than a training accident. No one in the military was punished over the incident.

The Military Police conducted its own investigation into Oved’s death, finding that the initial investigation was woefully insufficient, failing to look at larger issues of how the Paratroopers Brigade conducts tryouts for recruits and how safety protocols were apparently ignored.

In light of the Military Police probe and a report in the Haaretz newspaper around the same time, which included claims by Oved’s family that the military had failed to adequately look into the case, IDF Chief of Staff Aviv Kohavi ordered an additional investigation into the event itself and into the way it was examined.

The final investigation found that the first probe was “insufficient and did not expose all of the lacunae,” Kohavi said last year. Two brigadier generals were formally reprimanded and a third was summoned for a disciplinary hearing.