Gabay was a recent law graduate who would have turned 26 next week.
The body of a 25-year-old Israeli woman, who was assumed to be one of the hostages taken by Hamas after it attacked a music festival near the Gaza border, was found on Thursday, according to reports.
“Our Shani is gone. Our hearts are broken into pieces. We are all crying and refuse to believe, how much we waited for a different ending. Forty-seven days of hope came to an end with receiving the bitter news this morning about the murder of Shani on October 7,” Yokneam Mayor Simon Alfasi told The Jerusalem Post.
Shani Gabay was working at the Supernova music festival on October 7 when Hamas fired rockets at Israel and its gunmen attacked the site where 3,000 people were reportedly partying.
According to her family, Gabay had called her mother at 6:40 am informing her about the rockets overhead, asking her what to do. Her mother advised her to get out of her car and find a place to hide.
Gabay reportedly hid in a field shelter near Kibbutz Alumim. Two of her friends, who survived the attack, said the gunmen threw grenades at the shelter so Gabay ran back to her car but was shot. Later, she was taken to a police command post to get medical help. She was not seen again.
“She was told to run but we don’t know how well she could have run by that point,” her brother told Israeli media.
After they heard nothing from her, Gabay’s family set out to look for her at hospitals and medical centres where injured from the attack were taken. Her father headed to the sit of the party to find any clue to her whereabouts. Over the next five days, he turned over bodies lying in ditches and side of the roads to find her daughter.
Gabay was a recent law graduate who would have turned 26 next week, reports said.
The music festival was one of the first targets of the Palestinian group whose gunmen are reported to have entered the site on motorbikes, trucks and ever gliders, seen flying over the festival in viral video.
