Shai Mika Yifrach waited for Tair Rada by the fountain.

She had not imagined that the worst of all could happen

They danced together in a band, and sometimes they returned together from the Nofei Golan school to their homes.

"She was like a little sister," Yifrach said of her friend.

On that fateful day, she was one of the last people to see her alive, but the Rada family is angry with her.

A story of two girls and one tragedy

Eli Ashkenazi

17/12/2021

Friday, 17 December 2021, 21:00 Updated: 21:49

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In the video: Shai Mika leaving the courtroom after her testimony in the Zadorov trial (Photo: Eli Ashkenazi)

Shai Mika Yifrach described this week on the witness stand her relationship with the girl Tair Rada, who was murdered at the Nofei Golan school in Katzrin in 2006. "We were in a dance troupe, the parents were friends. I loved her very much and she was like a little sister and good friend," she said.

But after about an hour on the witness stand at the trial of Roman Zadorov, the accused in the murder of Tair Rada, it became clear that her words did not change the attitude of the bereaved mother, Ilana Rada, towards her.

"I want you to stay away from me, do not approach me, you are not Tair's girlfriend and you never were. You are a liar," Rada told her after coming down from the witness stand and approaching her.

Fifteen years have passed since the horrific murder of Tair Rada.

Since then, her mother has been angry at her daughter's friends, including Shai Mika Yifrach.

This week this anger erupted in court.

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• Arena expert in the Zadorov trial: There is no perfect match between the reconstruction of the murder and the findings in the arena

• 15 years since the murder of Tair Rada: Roman Zadorov and the judges arrived at the school in Katzrin

• Custom insole - half an hour and you go out into a new life

Shai Mika Yifrach at the end of her testimony in the Zadorov retrial, this week (Photo: Flash 90, David Cohen)

The retrial in the murder case returned to the Nazareth District Court the witnesses who also testified in the first trial, about 14 years ago.

And so, this week Shai Mika will blossom into the witness stand.

So she was only 16, a young girl caught in the eye of the storm.

Outside the courtroom, Yifrach said at the time that she had to move to a school because of the difficulty of returning to the place where her friend was murdered.

More on Walla!

15 years since the murder of Tair Rada: "Law enforcement agencies continue to whitewash all the years"

To the full article

During her testimony in the original trial, she burst into tears when the defense attorney, David Spiegel, was required to provide an answer as to the exact time she saw a man figure in the school building.

Who would have believed it she would be murdered, "she said in that debate.

This week was preceded by a storm testimony, when the network started things could be interpreted as threats increase. For this reason, the claim that she threatened, she entered the courtroom from a side door. When income hall and made her way to the witness stand, called her Ilana Rada in dismissal: "She is not threatened.

She is a liar and a coward. "

"The school was quiet and empty that day"

Shai Mika Yifrach was a ninth-grade student at the time of the murder, one year older than Tair Rada, who was in the eighth grade. The two were friendly. Yifrach said that Rada was considered a talented dancer in the band where they danced together, and said that sometimes they would return from school together.

So, in the first trial, she said that they met on the day of the murder in the school building, in the break between the sixth and seventh lessons. "She asked me what I was doing. I told her I was going home, and she said she did not want to go in at seven o'clock," Yifrach testified. "She was still on a break with friends. I walked towards the pergola and waited for her there."

"At about 13: 00-13: 05 she came towards the pergola. She put her head on me, I stroked her. She played with me on the phone. She was without her bag, she took a box of chewing gum from my bag, told me: 'I want to drink "Go for a few minutes and come back." She left me. After ten minutes I got up and went to the fountain. I thought that if she went she would probably get stuck there in a conversation with one of the friends.

"Like a little sister and a good friend."

Tair Rada (Photo: Ginny)

Unlike her testimony 14 years ago this week, it showed confidence in her testimony, and sometimes an alternative to defense counsel, attorney Yoram Halevy.

She told how she waited near the water fountain at school, and then she asked someone if he saw illuminates. When she left school looked stations shuttle, "She did not think of the worst and just went home," she said.

"Are you testing me as a girlfriend?"

The bereaved mother, Ilana Rada, raised questions about the behavior of her daughter's friends in the first days after the murder.

At times she referred directly to Yifrach.

"Shai Yifrach has never been Tair's girlfriend and to be precise, Shai Yifrach has abandoned Tair. This is not how a person behaves, who defines himself as a 'close friend,'" she wrote two years ago.

In the first sentence she will flourish with the question of why she or other companies did not seek Rada at the time, when she did not return.

Expressed bewilderment regarding the behavior of the companies.

Ilana Rada (Photo: Walla! NEWS system, Noam Moskowitz)

"You see that a good friend, like a little sister to you, is how you expressed yourself, Tair - leaves you, goes to drink water, you wait for her, she does not come back. Waits longer - she does not come back. Why did not you call her?", The defense attorney wondered, " D. David Spiegel.

: "I told you we are putting cell phone"

: "Why did not you ask one of your friends or companies, Pelephone to call her?"

"that at first no one thought this would happen. She's a child friendly so we expected it certainly was delayed with friends or something in the way. "

:" But are you telling that you went through the station to see maybe she talks with friends you have not seen. "

" right. "

:" you have not seen. "

: "No."

: "But you did not call even after I got home? "

: "Are you testing me as a company? I do not understand what is meant, I did not call."

: "Why?"

: "Because no one thought she would be murdered at school."

"They were girls? I do not buy it"

Ilana Rada's anger grew when her daughter's name made headlines about five years ago, when Shai Mika Yifrach participated in the TV show "Big Brother".

The mother saw this as a cynical use of her daughter's memory.

"From the very beginning, when she entered 'Big Brother,' she entered the story that she is Tair's girlfriend," Rada said in a discussion in an interview with her at the time for Gabi Gazit's program on 103FM.

"I'm very, very sorry that people, to get into 'Big Brother' or to do some item, use it as a cover story to make a rating out of it. It is difficult for her, for such plans. "

Roman Zadorov at the Nofei Golan School, as part of the judges' tour of the place, this month (Photo: Eli Ashkenazi)

"I understand every word you say," the interviewer, Gabi Gazit, told her at the time. "I think she said good things, nice things about your daughter in memory of the blessing," he added - while Varada rejected it. "She has nothing else to say about my daughter, but you know what, she contradicts herself," she said. "Because if she was a very, very good friend of Tair, and every day they came back together from school - how is it that on that day, the day of the murder, she is not going to look for her? She is the last to see her. She is her last. She said: 'I am going, bring the "The case, and it's back. '

"They were girls at that time. Many years have passed since then," Gazit said.

"There's a lot of talk about it in court, too. I'm very, very sorry to say I'm not really buying the childhood argument," Rada replied.

"I very much do not accept that both in the courts and in the police and in investigations as if they always talk about it. Our youth are not innocent. Because when it is convenient for everyone to see our youth innocent then we see it that way, to cover up lies, rendering. But when not. "Comfortable, so just dance to it. There were boys who once murdered children. And there are boys who were murdered. We see what the youth are doing today. Let's not be naive. We are no longer Righteous Among the Nations, not even the youth."

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