"I want to start life over": Father of 6-year-old stabbed to death by his mother asks for help

"It's hard for me to trust," said Doron Nathaniel Hess, who lost his only son, 6-year-old Liam, and the family dog Affi about two years ago due to the actions of the mother, Sigal Yana Itzkovich. "I never thought for a moment that a mother couldn't protect her child, that God forbid something like this would happen. To this day, I don't really know what happened there. It's not normal to think that such a thing could happen," he said in an interview with Ynet.

6-year-old Liam was murdered in July 2024 in the family apartment in Herzliya, while Doron was out of the house. Afterward, the mother left her home with an axe, bleeding, and was documented attempting to attack passersby and a security guard at the Seven Stars Mall. She was acquitted of the murder charge due to a psychotic episode at the time of the act and was sent to psychiatric hospitalization in a closed facility for 25 years.

But the loss of Doron's son was not the only difficulty he had to deal with. The disaster left him with PTSD, and he is recognized by the National Insurance Institute with 100% loss of work capacity. In the two years that have passed, he lived in central Tel Aviv with the help of his family, but in the coming days, he will be forced to leave his home again. In the meantime, he is being helped by his new dog, Luna, whom he wants to train as a service dog, a process estimated to cost about 50,000 shekels.

"The very fact that she is next to me gives me security. I live because of her," he said. "You live in a relationship, you don't investigate the person you live with. The tragedy that happened to me happened from the person who was supposed to be closest to me. It's hard for me to be around people. For two years I haven't been to a supermarket, but I take Luna out for walks three times a day. She gives me a sense of security."

Doron explained the importance of the procedure and described that if Luna meets the requirements and is certified, she will be able to accompany him to places he currently cannot enter with her: hospitals, courts, and public places. He meets the criteria for assistance from a service dog, but because his condition is not the result of a security incident or a hostile act, he is not eligible for funding for the training.

"If it were a nationalistic incident, I would have received a service dog from the Ministry of Defense, but I turned to the National Insurance Institute with a request for funding for the training and did not receive it. I also turned to the HMO. I am supposed to be rehabilitating and I am not succeeding," he said. According to him, service dogs "retire at age 8 and the training takes a year. I am in a race against time. I want her to be able to be everywhere because she is the one who allows me to go out."

Regarding his home, which he will leave in the coming days, he said: "I received support from the family, but I cannot keep the apartment anymore. In seven days we are leaving and I have nowhere to go. I am looking for an apartment that I can move into with Luna. I don't want to live in an isolated place. It won't do me any good. I am only now starting to understand what happened and to rehabilitate. They say 'a change of place is a change of luck.' I want that, to start life over. I ask those who can and have the possibility to help," he shared about the crowdfunding project he opened, also to commemorate his son. "The minimum donation is ten shekels and even that can help. I must find an apartment in the coming days. It's not simple."

About his son, he said that one of the ways he found to cope with the loss is building Lego, which was one of the things Liam loved: "It's a calming tool, part of the rehabilitation. Liam would have been excited to see the creations I built. I built a Lego set of more than 200,000 pieces. I have a whole room just for Lego. The most important thing I had was to commemorate Liam, so that they know he has a loving father. He was the most amazing child there is."