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A baby who was delivered prematurely after his young parents were killed in a car crash in Brooklyn has died, the police said on Monday.
A day after a car crash claimed the lives of a young couple in Brooklyn and their son was born prematurely in an emergency procedure, the baby died on Monday, the police said.
The parents, Raizy and Nathan Glauber, both 21, were on their way to see a doctor after midnight Sunday when the livery cab they were riding in was hit by a BMW sedan. The parents were taken to different hospitals, where they were pronounced dead, and the baby boy was delivered prematurely and intubated, and was said to be in serious condition.
The death of the baby, delivered about three months early, elevated the sadness in the couple’s tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community in Williamsburg, which had sought solace in the newborn’s survival. His death also served to reinvigorate calls to bring serious criminal charges against the driver of the BMW sedan that struck the livery vehicle that his parents, Raizy and Nathan Glauber, both 21, were riding in.
But on Monday the baby was pronounced dead at Bellevue Hospital Center, a police spokesman said.
Police officials on Monday identified the driver as Julio Acevedo, 44, of Brooklyn, who fled the scene of the crash. He was still being sought Monday afternoon.
When the crash happened, Ms. Glauber was 24 weeks pregnant, and she was rushing to seek medical attention because she could no longer feel the baby, a family member said.
The owner of the BMW, Takia Walker, 29, of the Bronx, was arrested on Sunday on charges of insurance fraud, accused of buying and registering the car under false pretenses.
She and her husband were newlyweds, looking forward to the joy of having their first child, when their livery cab, headed through Williamsburg, Brooklyn, was struck broadside by the gray sedan, whose driver and passenger abandoned their own wrecked car and vanished into the night.
The crash occurred Sunday just after midnight. The Glaubers, feeling something may have been wrong with the pregnancy, called a livery cab to take them to a hospital. Their cab was struck on the driver’s side by the BMW with such force that Ms. Glauber was ejected onto the pavement and both cars were mangled. Mr. Glauber was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, and his wife was taken to Bellevue Hospital Center, where the baby was delivered prematurely and intubated. The parents were pronounced dead early Sunday.
The baby’s initial survival was hailed by friends and family as a precious gift.
The police said that Mr. Acevedo would, at minimum, face charges for fleeing the scene of an accident. Investigators may seek to establish whether he was drunk at the time of the accident, a task made more difficult by his flight from the scene. Police and witness accounts had indicated that there was a female passenger in the BMW, but police officials said Monday that Mr. Acevedo had been driving alone.
In the aftermath of the horrifying accident, friends rushed to the hospital to visit the newborn tenaciously clinging to life, then on to the synagogue for the funeral of his parents.
A witness told the police that the BMW had been traveling at a high rate of speed on Kent Avenue in Williamsburg, Brooklyn, when it struck the cab as it turned onto the avenue from Wilson Street.
Even for a community accustomed to burying its dead quickly, it was a shattering avalanche of events.
“The driver of the BMW was doing at least 60 miles an hour when it hit the other vehicle,” said Paul J. Browne, the Police Department’s chief spokesman.
The crash happened at Kent Avenue and Wilson Street. The police said the livery cab, a black 2008 Toyota Camry, was traveling west on Wilson Street when it was struck on the driver’s side by the 2010 BMW, which had been going north on Kent.
The deaths of the couple brought more than 1,000 mourners onto the street outside Congregation Yetev Lev D’Satmar in Williamsburg on Sunday for a heart-rending funeral service, as sobs and wails punctuated the words spoken in grief. There will not be a similar service for the boy; he will be buried with his parents in Orange County, N.Y.
It was not clear if one or both of the drivers was at fault, the police said; the crash was still under investigation. The driver of the BMW is expected to face an eventual charge of fleeing the scene of the accident.
Rabbi Mayer Berger, director of operations for Chesed Shel Emes, which runs a group that provides free funerals for people who die without relatives, said he was at the hospital early Sunday when the baby was delivered and when Ms. Glauber was pronounced dead.
Mr. Glauber was taken to Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan and was pronounced dead on arrival at 12:41 a.m., a spokesman for the hospital said.
“The happiness that was on one side of the room versus the tragedy on the other side was unbelievable,” Rabbi Berger said. “And for a coward to leave the scene, it’s unbelievable; it makes it so much worse.”
His wife was taken a few blocks farther to Bellevue Hospital Center, a major trauma center skilled at tackling the most challenging emergencies, where the baby was delivered, according to the police. The police said Ms. Glauber also had been pronounced dead on arrival.
Under their interpretation of Jewish law, Hasidim do not perform funerals for newborns who do not survive 30 days, according to Mendel Rosenberg, of Chesed Shel Emes.
The livery driver, Pedro Nuñez Delacruz, 32, was taken to Bellevue and released. “Show your face,” his wife, Yesenia Perdomo, who is pregnant with their fourth child, said Sunday, addressing the BMW driver, who, with the passenger, was still being sought by the police.
Mr. Delacruz’s application to use the Toyota as a livery cab was pending, and the car should not have been sent to pick up passengers, according to the city’s Taxi and Limousine Commission. He declined to comment after speaking to the police.
Neighbors in the couple’s tight-knit Orthodox Jewish community said the couple were part of the Satmar Hasidic sect and had been paired by a matchmaker before marrying about a year ago. “They were a special couple,” said a young woman who lived near Ms. Glauber’s parents, two blocks from the accident, and saw them out walking almost every day.
Ms. Glauber was from a rabbinical family and worked at a hardware distribution store, a relative said. Mr. Glauber grew up in Monsey, N.Y., and came from a prominent family that founded the G&G clothing chain, a major supplier of suits and other garments to the Orthodox community. Mr. Glauber was studying Jewish texts, a traditional pursuit before going on to a career.
A photograph shows the couple smiling shyly in wedding clothes — she in a high-necked white lace gown holding a matching white bouquet, he in a long, belted ceremonial coat and an elaborate fur toque.
Hours later, a solid river of black-hatted, black-coated men packed most of Rodney Street from curb to curb, as the two coffins draped in black velvet were carried from the synagogue after the funeral. Women filled the sidewalk and brownstone stairs on the south side of the street.
Those who spoke at the funeral included Zalman Teitelbaum, a grand rabbi of the Satmar sect, and relatives of the young couple. All wept and wailed as they addressed the mourners.
“It’s very hard for me,” Ms. Glauber’s father, Yitzchok Silberstein, told the mourners. “But I have to say that whatever God does is right, even if I do not understand, he has a plan.”
Her brother, Nuchemyoel Silberstein, said the couple had dinner Saturday night, as usual, at her parents’ house, about a block from their own home.
“We were sitting just last night together, and now they are gone,” Nuchemyoel Silberstein said. “How can she be gone?”
Ms. Gluck, a cousin of Mr. Glauber’s, said the couple had been thrilled to be starting a family. But she said that in a harsh coincidence, Mr. Glauber’s parents had given birth to another boy a few days ago, and will now bury his big brother.
One of the first people to arrive after the crash, Yisroel Altman, 24, a salesman who lives in South Williamsburg, rushed to the corner of Wilson Street and Kent Avenue when he heard there had been an accident. He said he saw emergency responders use metal cutters to pull Mr. Glauber, unconscious, from the back passenger door of the smashed Toyota and perform CPR on him.
Ms. Glauber, who had been sitting behind the driver, was thrown from the vehicle and came to rest lying down underneath a tractor-trailer parked on the west side of Kent Avenue, Mr. Altman said. On Sunday morning, there was debris, including a car bumper and blue medical gloves, still underneath the tractor-trailer.
Mr. Altman said paramedics had told him that Ms. Glauber had been able to speak to them when she was first placed into the ambulance.
The driver, Mr. Altman said, was standing, talking to the police, and “looked O.K.”
Mr. Altman said another witness had told him that the driver of the BMW walked away from his wrecked car, then doubled back for a female companion in the passenger seat. The BMW is registered to a woman in the Bronx who was not in the car when it crashed, the police said.
The witness told Mr. Altman that he tried to ask the BMW driver if he was all right, but that he and the woman ignored the question and kept walking.
