Two teen-age Herzliya high school students who pleaded guilty to the “murder for fun” slaying of taxi driver Derek Roth last January have been sentenced to 16 years in prison.
The prosecution had proposed tough sentences, though not necessarily life imprisonment, to serve as a deterrent to others contemplating similar crimes.
But the Tel Aviv District Court appeared to agree with the defense that the ages of the defendants, both of whom are 14, warranted a lesser sentence in the hope that they could be rehabilitated.
When sentence was pronounced, Roth’s Wife, Gila, who was in court with her daughters, shouted at the three judges that they should have handed down life sentences for the murder of her husband.
Turning to the youthful defendants, she then shouted, “I would have liked to see you grow old in prison.”
With time off for good conduct, the two youths may be free within 10 years.
In January, Roth was found slumped dead over the wheel of his taxi, with several shots in the back of his head.
The two boys were picked up by police within two days of the murder, after they had boasted of their exploits to friends in school. The mother of one of the friends subsequently told the police what her son had heard in school.
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