Help for family of Abu Dhabi mall murder victim
By Irene Arsenia, Staff Reporter
ABU DHABI - While police detained the suspect in the fatal stabbing of a woman at a mall in the capital, a fundraising campaign was underway to help the victim’s children.
Footprints Recruiting, the company that recruited American teacher Ibolya Belaszi Ryan, has set up an online page to raise money for the education of Ryan’s twin 11-year-old boys and older daughter.
Ryan, 47, was stabbed to death with a kitchen knife in the ladies toilet of Boutik Mall on Reem Island. The suspect, an Emirati woman wearing a niqab, an abaya and black gloves, has been arrested by police.
Footprints Recruiting said the Ryan family needs financial assistance for funeral expenses and an educational trust fund for the three children. So far, the gofundme page has raised US$8,480 (AED31,147) of its $100,000 target.
Ryan--a kindergarten teacher born and raised in Romania--had trained in the US and Europe before relocating to the UAE to take up a teaching job in Abu Dhabi in September last year. She had lived in Colorado before getting divorced to her husband.
In the UAE, she lived 35 minutes away from Downtown Abu Dhabi with her twin sons. One of her goals was to “gain some proficiency in Arabic”.
Meanwhile, police have detained the suspect in Ryan’s murder. Police said the female Emirati suspect, who is in her 30s, is unemployed and has confessed to the crime.
Police said the suspect planted a home-made bomb outside the home of an Egyptian-American doctor on the Abu Dhabi corniche an hour after committing her first crime. Police were able to deactivate the bomb. Police who raided her home found bomb-making ingredients at her home and in the same white SUV she used and was tracked in CCTV footage at the Boutik Mall.
Colonel Dr Rashid Mohammad Borshid, Head of the Criminal Investigation Department, said the suspect was targeting her victims based on their skin colour.
Watch how police solved the case:
