An elderly woman who was fatally struck in early April by an unlicensed SUV driver as she crossed a Brooklyn street was a Hasidic Jewish matriarch who fled Russia after World War II on an escape train to Poland, family and police said Wednesday.

On April 8 around 8:25 p.m., Taibel Brod — whom family members said was 99 years old — was crossing with a walk signal at the intersection of Brooklyn Ave. and Montgomery St. in Crown Heights, and had made it midway across Montgomery St., when the 65-year-old driver of a 2023 GMC Yukon SUV, traveling south on Brooklyn Ave., made a left turn going east onto Montgomery St., striking the victim, cops said.

“She walked every morning from Crown Heights to Brookdale Hospital, she used to feed patients there for many, many years,” said the victim’s youngest son, Yisroel Brod, 70, who is a fundraising consultant.

Taibel Brod was a longtime resident in Crown Heights, and the matriarch to a large Chabad family, and the mother of five children — three boys and two girls — with many grandchildren, the son said.

She was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine, and left Russia with many other adherents of Hasidism on the famous escape trains to Poland. She ended up in the Displaced Persons camp of Poking, according to an obituary. When Taibel Brod left Russia after World War II, she left with another person’s passport to escape, the family said.

“She came to a displaced person’s camp in Germany in 1946 at Pocking, Germany. That’s where she met my father. My two sisters were born there,” Yisorel Brod said. “She came to New York in 1951 and settled in Brownsville and now in Crown Heights.”

Cops, who had reported Taibel Brod was 101 years old, arrested the driver, Menachem Shagalow, the day of the accident, charging him with aggravated unlicensed operator, failure to exercise due care, and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle.

Yisorel Brod described the accident as a “tragedy.”

Taibel Brod was transported by EMS to Maimonides Medical Center in stable condition with injuries to the head after the accident. She died nearly two weeks later, succumbing to her injuries on April 20, according to police.

Her family described her as a “devout” person who did her own shopping, washing and took care of herself as best she could.

“The hardship in her youth in Russia gave her the strength to go forward. She survived communism,” said her son Yosef Bord, 73, a building engineer from Los Angeles, Calif.

Originally Published: April 23, 2025 at 7:51 PM EDT