What began as a grim mystery in central Israel is now being investigated as a suspected terror attack.

Israeli police and the Shin Bet have arrested a 17-year-old Arab Israeli from Lod on suspicion of murdering Ruslan and Olga Prikhodko, a married couple from Rishon Lezion who were found shot dead inside their car in an open area between Mishmar Ayalon and Karmei Yosef. The suspect, a minor whose name has not been released, was arrested by Yamam counterterrorism forces after investigators came to believe the killing may have been carried out for nationalist motives.

The case initially moved in a very different direction. Police first examined the possibility of a murder-suicide, in part because Ruslan legally owned a firearm. But that theory began to collapse when investigators found his gun locked in a safe at the couple’s home, not at the scene, and reported that no gunshot residue was found on his hands. The working assumption then shifted, someone else had shot the couple and fled.

The teen confessed to the allegations against him, while investigators are still trying to determine where the murder weapon came from and whether any additional motive was involved beyond the suspected nationalist motive. Hebrew reports said police believe the couple may have been chosen at random and that there was no prior connection between them and the suspect. His detention has been extended by eight days in the Rishon Lezion Magistrate’s Court.

The arrest is also drawing attention because Hebrew outlets reported that the suspect’s brother was linked to a previous deadly ramming attack in central Israel. That detail is now part of the broader security context surrounding a case that investigators initially treated as a local crime scene and now see as something far more serious.

Ruslan, 46, and Olga, 44, immigrated to Israel from Ukraine more than two decades ago. Olga worked at Hamashbir, while Ruslan worked as an elevator technician for Electra. They leave behind a teenage son. Relatives said the family had been planning a trip to Austria to celebrate Olga’s upcoming birthday, and they pushed back from the beginning against the early murder-suicide theory.

“This was not murder-suicide,” a family member told Ynet after the arrest.

For their family, the arrest confirms what they had insisted from the first hours after the couple vanished: Ruslan and Olga were not a domestic headline or a private tragedy. They were a couple on a morning trip who never came home, and investigators now believe they may have been murdered in a terror attack in the heart of Israel.