Cops Hunt for Hit-Run Driver Who Killed Expectant Orthodox Parents

By Reuters March 3, 2013

Police began an intensive search on Sunday for a suspected hit-and-run driver and a passenger who fled an accident on Saturday that killed a young couple on the way to the hospital to have their first baby, who survived.

Investigators launched what a police spokeswoman called “full-on search” for the male driver and female passenger whose gray BMW sedan struck the side of a livery cab around midnight that was taking the Orthodox Jewish couple to the hospital.

The mother, Raizi Glauber, and the father, Nathan Glauber, both 21 years old, were pronounced dead at separate hospitals, but doctors at Bellevue were able to deliver a premature infant boy, police said.

People in the community were thinking of the child’s well-being, spokesman Isaac Abraham said.

“How can the community react? It’s a shock. It’s like a punch in the gut,” said Abraham, who has known the deceased mother’s parents since childhood. “People are not prepared for this. Parents are not prepared to bury their children.”

The driver of the livery cab was listed in stable condition at Bellevue Hospital, police said.

“Upon impact, the male driver and additional occupant of Vehicle #2 fled the scene on foot, leaving the vehicle behind,” police said in a statement.

A funeral was scheduled for Sunday in the largely Orthodox Jewish district of Williamsburg in the New York borough of Brooklyn, according to the website Vos Iz Neias (What’s News?), which describes itself as the voice of the Orthodox Jewish community.

The couple’s death was “a tragedy beyond (belief),” community leader Isaac Abraham told the website.

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