NEW YORK — A 99-year-old Holocaust survivor died after a driver hit him as he was crossing a Brooklyn street in his wheelchair on Saturday, the NYPD and the man's friends and family said.
Jack Mikulincer was in his electric wheelchair traveling north on Coleridge Street, at the intersection of Oriental Boulevard in Manhattan Beach, around 4:45 p.m. when a driver in a 2020 BMW X5 traveling west on the boulevard struck him, police said.
What You Need To Know
- Jack Mikulincer, 99, died after a car hit him as he was crossing a street near his home in Brooklyn on Saturday, the NYPD said
- The man driving the car stayed at the scene after he struck Mikulincer and has not been charged, police said
- Mikulincer's friend, Jehuda Lindenblatt, and his daughter, Aviva Tucker, told NY1 the 99-year-old was a Holocaust survivor
- Mikulincer and Lindenblatt were on their way to synagogue together when the car struck him, Lindenblatt said
Emergency personnel who responded to the scene found Mikulincer lying on the street with body trauma after the driver hit him, the NYPD said. The nonagenarian, who lived less than a block from the intersection, was pronounced dead at NYC Health + Hospitals/Coney Island, police said.
The 52-year-old man driving the BMW stayed at the scene after he struck Mikulincer and has not been charged, the NYPD said. An investigation is ongoing.
Mikulincer's friend, Jehuda Lindenblatt, and his daughter, Aviva Tucker, told NY1 the 99-year-old was a Holocaust survivor. Mikulincer and Lindenblatt were on their way to synagogue together when the car struck him, Lindenblatt said Sunday.
"Every Saturday we go to the synagogue together," Lindenblatt said. "A man you never find, like this. Kind, everybody loves him."
"And you see a friend die in front of you, yes, unbelievable," he added. "[But] he died instantly, the doctor told me, in the hospital on Coney Island. So he didn't have pain."
Mikulincer, who was a grandfather and a great-grandfather, was "a very kind, gentle soul," Tucker recalled.
"He loved his grandchildren. He loved his great grandchildren," Tucker said. For years, Mikulincer owned a bakery on Brighton 2nd Street, Tucker said. The Brooklyn resident was also an avid painter.
"He loved to go down to the basement and paint, and it was even dark down there, but he still just loved painting," Tucker said.
The New Jersey resident traveled to Brooklyn each week to visit her father.
"I used to come over every Tuesday morning, stay for a couple of hours, and we talked, and we had coffee, and we'd have breakfast together," she said. "We had a good time, you know. I think he enjoyed my company, and I definitely enjoyed his."
"He was just kind to everybody. I think everybody loved him," Tucker said. "And he was everything to me."