Car Kills 6-Year-Old Orthodox Boy Walking to Synagogue With Mom
Image by Screen Shot
A 6-year-old New Jersey boy was struck and killed by a car while walking to his Orthodox synagogue.
Chaim Kraus of Highland Park was heading to Agudath Israel of Edison and Highland Park with his mother, Rochie, and a second boym when the two were hit by a car that jumped that curb on Raritan Avenue in their Central Jersey township on Saturday afternoon.
Rochie Kraus, 37, was still being treated for critical injuries as of Monday, according to WABC-TV in New York. The second boy was not injured.
The driver, Shang Zhen Huang, 21, of Piscataway, was treated for minor injuries before being released to the police. NJ.com reported he is being held in the Middlesex County jail in lieu of $200,000 bail.
Huang has been charged with two counts of aggravated assault and is being held in lieu of a $200,000 bail. Police are still investigating the incident.
A witness told NJ.com that a concrete trashcan had likely been hit during the crash, as it appeared to have ricocheted across the four-lane highway street.
“The tragic accident yesterday has the entire community grieving,” Highland Park Mayor Gayle Brill Mittler said.
Raritan Ave., also called Route 27, has no parking, so traffic moves alongside the sidewalks.
Speeding is a problem, area residents say.
“It is a wild street,” family friend Rena Teitelbaum told VIN News. “Police are always out there.”
A message from our Publisher & CEO Rachel Fishman Feddersen
I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism so that we can be prepared for whatever news 2025 brings.
At a time when other newsrooms are closing or cutting back, the Forward has removed its paywall and invested additional resources to report on the ground from Israel and around the U.S. on the impact of the war, rising antisemitism and polarized discourse.
Readers like you make it all possible. Support our work by becoming a Forward Member and connect with our journalism and your community.
— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO
