The first Jerusalem police officer to climb onto the bulldozer during Wednesday's attack did not shoot the assailant because he thought he was dead, the officer told press on Thursday.
This explains why Husam Dwayat was not killed earlier into the seven-minute rampage which left three Israelis dead and scores wounded.
"When I got into the tractor he was bleeding from the head and did not have a pulse," said Shadi Dau, 29.
Minutes before he reached the tractor, Dau's partner, Elinor Nahum, 22, shot and wounded the assailant from the street. Dau said he then looked for the key to the bulldozer to turn the engine off, feeling "no need" to fire another bullet at the motionless attacker.
However, a rock hurled at the assailant by a passer-by then revived him, and he started screaming "Allahu Akbar," the police officer recounted.
Dau said that the area inside of the bulldozer was too small to shoot at the assailant and his first impulse was to grab at him. In a scene captured by TV cameras, Dau began struggling with the Arab driver, who continued on his rampage, his foot pressed on the gas pedal while fending off the police officer.
As the two men fought, an off-duty soldier climbed atop the bulldozer and fired at the attacker, stilling him again. A member of an elite police combat unit, Eli Mizrahi, 28, who also jumped on the vehicle, then fired several bullets into the driver's body to ensure his death.
The incident served to highlight the importance of the controversial policy of "confirming the kill," (firing additional shots to ensure attackers are dead) Israeli security officials said.
Dwayat, a father of two, who had a criminal record, was employed as a tractor operator by an Arab-owned construction company based in east Jerusalem that is carrying out infrastructure work for the city's long-delayed light rail project, Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby said.
He obtained a permit to work as a tractor operator despite a criminal record which included a two-year jail term for raping a Jewish woman he had been romantically involved with prior to his marriage.
Meanwhile, Jerusalem police on Thursday removed a mourners' tent Dwayat's family had set up in the courtyard of their home.
Also on Thursday, far-right activists Baruch Marzel and Itamar Ben-Gvir sent a letter to Jerusalem police chief Aharon Franco, requesting that he allow them to demonstrate outside Dwayat's house on Sunday. Ben-Ruby said that police were "considering" the request. A previous rally outside the east Jerusalem home of Ala Abu Dhaim, the terrorist who killed eight students at the city's Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva in March, ended in violence.
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