The NY Daily News reports: A heartbroken Brooklyn family on Sunday buried a 9-year-old son struck and killed by a car – just five years after the boy’s younger brother tragically drowned.
The sobbing father of Yehoshua Ganzfried Z”L escorted the small wooden Aron from Congregation Kehilas Yakov Pupa as about 500 people packed the Williamsburg street.
Shlomo Ganzfried, 38, lost a 2-year-old son, Amron, on June 26, 2004.
The child drowned in a pond in Westchester County after wandering away from a service his parents were attending at a Shul.
“His son should go up to heaven and hold his brother’s hand and go up to God,” said family friend Sammy Gumbo, translating the dad’s Yiddish sermon.
“It is a second tragedy,” Gumbo, 36, said. “The father is heartbroken. But he is a firm believer in God.”
Joshua woke up early Shabbos to join other neighborhood boys studying Jewish prayers in exchange for candy.
The third-grader was part of a gifted scholar’s program at the Shul called chevera tehillim.
The boy was walking alone just a block from his family’s Flushing Ave. apartment when driver Novella Bilkerdyk, 54, plowed her Honda into him.
She was arraigned for driving with a suspended license and released, said a spokesman for Brooklyn District Attorney Charles Hynes.
“No one said goodbye,” Shlomo Ganzfried cried to the crowd.
The family has six surviving children.
(Source: NY Daily News)
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3 Responses
I know this person very well. He is an extremely devoted person, to his family and to his fellow men. He has a very strong Amunah, this is what keeps his wheel spinning.
As tragic as it is, I hardly think this poor driver ‘plowed her Honda into him’. I think that’s too harsh of a statement. She will live with this for the rest of her life that much is guaranteed. Her only fault seems to be that her insurance lapsed.
I’m not implying the child did anything wrong, but I think that we, as Chareidim, need to take the secular laws a bit more seriously … one being to teach our children how to cross the streets properly etc. I see frightening situations very often. [a child often just imitates the grown ups around them. Think of that next time you j-walk or walk against a light!]
#2 this comment has no room here. Think of the family!!!!!