Serious injuries from crash at Chabad Chanukah party in Woodmere

By Michael Orbach

Special to thejewishstar.com / Dec. 25, 2008

As many as 14 people were injured in Woodmere Thursday afternoon when a BMW sport utility vehicle slammed into a room full of parents and children at a Chanukah party sponsored by Chabad of the Five Towns.

The BMW was driven by an elderly man who apparently lost control. He struck another SUV parked in front of the building and shoved it up on the sidewalk before roaring around it and through a plate glass window. The BMW then hurtled across the room full of people, striking an inflatable Moonwalk before coming to rest against the back wall.

"Suddenly out of nowhere, a car came crashing through the window," said Jane Seidemann, who was in the building at the time.

Chabad’s Chanukah Wonderland was underway in the building at Broadway and Franklin Place when the accident occurred at about 2:30 p.m.

A Hatzalah EMT who was in a restaurant across the street immediately began to triage the injured while all available Hatzalah EMTs, paramedics and ambulances were dispatched to the scene. Other Hatzalah ambulances were dispatched from Queens.

Several of the injured are reported to be in critical condition, including at least one child. Several others are in serious condition.

At one point, a source told The Jewish Star, Hatzalah ambulances were transporting “five patients to five different hospitals.”

Volunteer Fire Department and Nassau County Police Department ambulances also responded to the scene.

Cordoned off by police, what had previously been a “wonderland” was full of shattered glass and children's toys.

Sarah Weis, who was feeding her daughter inside the building at the time of the accident, said that the SUV did not stop until it hit the wall and that her child's stroller was directly in front of the vehicle.

"Someone yelled 'Oh my G-d,' and we looked and the car went right past me," she said.

Witnesses gave conflicting reports of whether there were children inside the Moonwalk at the time of the accident. A Chabad of the Five Towns employee named Leah said she managed to grab three children out of the Moonwalk before the vehicle hit.

"It happened so fast. It was instinct," she said.

Once the SUV crashed into the wall a group of people lifted it to free a man caught underneath.

Physician Yitzchak Moskowitz, a former EMT, was driving down Broadway from Cedarhurst when the accident occurred. He stopped to help and maintained one victim’s airway until paramedics were able to intubate with a breathing tube. Moskowitz described the man as elderly and covered in blood.

"This was horrible. Really horrible," recalled an EMT who was among the first on the scene. There was no easy way to evacuate the people from the building, he said.

A local attorney, Ben Brafman, who said he was informally representing Chabad at the scene, stressed that the crash was accidental and not an attack on Chabad, which was recently the target of terrorists in Mumbai, India.

"This is a horrible tragic accident and I think that’s the word that everyone needs to stress," Brafman said. He had been in the building with his children and grandchildren twenty minutes before the crash, he said. "It’s important that people understand this was a terrible accident and not a deliberate act.”

"It was a wonderful event,” said Rabbi Zalman Wolowik, who heads the Chabad of the Five Towns. “I hope and pray

that everyone who was injured, physically and emotionally, has a full recovery."