A Jewish 14-year-old was murdered Saturday in southern Ukrainian city of Kherson by a young man she met several days before.
Victoria Darda, who was in the ninth grade at the Ohr Avner Jewish school, was beaten and throttled near the city’s beach. Mikhail Prokopetz, 18, confessed to the crime.
Jewish leaders said they are not assuming the murder was motivated by anti-Semitism. “I pray and hope that this murder is not an act of anti-Semitism,” Rabbi Josef-Itzhok Wolf, chief rabbi of Kherson, told JTA.
Darda will be buried today in Kherson.
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