SHE LIVED!
Cab slams teen after driver has heart attack
A 13-YEAR-OLD girl waiting for a school bus in Brooklyn miraculously survived with just a broken leg after a car jumped a curb and hit her on Thursday morning.
Shocking video obtained by the Daily News shows the teen, identified by sources as Gittie Hershenbaum, innocently standing on a sidewalk in Borough Park about 8:15 a.m. She’s wearing a plaid skirt and blue jacket, and carrying a burgundy bookbag on her back.
As Gittie fidgets on the sidewalk, twirling in semicircles, a black Toyota Camry traveling north on 55th St. crosses 18th Ave., jumps the curb and barrels past a dead-end sign. The video shows the girl darting to her right and then getting hit by the car.
She was briefly splayed on the hood of the Camry, which city officials said was an Uber vehicle, before the car slammed into a fence.
A moment later, Gittie hobbles toward awestruck onlookers, telling them that she thought the car hit her toe, witnesses said. She survived with a fractured leg.
“My daughter’s traumatized,” Gittie’s father Israel Hershenbaum told The News hours later. “We’re getting over it. I thank God that this is the outcome.”
Hershenbaum believes his daughter’s heavy bookbag cushioned the blow.
“Her backpack was very full of books, and that’s what (held) her back,” he said. “Her backpack saved her.”
Witnesses were stunned that Gittie survived.
“The girl had actually no clue what was going on,” said a 32-year-old witness, who would only identify herself as Miriam.
“(As) I approached, I see her walking over to me,” she said. “I’m the one that she actually hugged, and I’m like, ‘What happened?’ She says she thinks the car hit her toe.”
Paramedics rushed Gittie and the motorist to Maimonides Hospital.
“She barely had a scratch on her,” said Yanky Meyer, who operates a Jewish burial group. “If it was two minutes later, there would have been seven girls waiting at the stop.”
The 48-year-old driver, who had a heart attack before the wreck, was in critical but stable condition late Thursday, cops said. His name was not immediately released.
The motorist was taking a home health aide to work when he lost control of the car. The passenger was trying to open a
back door and escape before the car rolled through the intersection. But she was still in car when the girl was mowed down.
“I heard a hysterical woman screaming . ... She was a passenger ... and I see her running out of the car,” Miriam said.
The passenger was not booked through the Uber app at the time of the accident, a company spokeswoman said. Gittie’s three sisters were lagging behind, and were only a few feet from the corner when the sedan struck their sibling, witnesses said.
“She was the first one . ... Her three sisters were tattling along,” said Miriam, who was waiting for the school bus with her daughter on an opposite corner when she heard a crash and ran over.
“I’m glad to see she’s well,” Miriam said. “If you see the (video), and if you see the girl — it’s a true miracle.”