Driver arrested for fatally striking 10-year-old girl in Brooklyn crosswalk
Investigators have arrested the driver who fatally struck a 10-year-old girl crossing a Brooklyn street, police said Wednesday.
Isaac Karczag, 62, allegedly veered his silver Buick into an oncoming lane and was turning against the light when he slammed into little Yitty Wertzberger in a Williamsburg intersection about 2:40 p.m. Tuesday.
He remained at the scene. Cops later charged him with failure to yield to a pedestrian, disobeying a traffic device and failure to exercise due care. He was released with a desk appearance ticket to appear in Brooklyn Criminal Court in the next few weeks.
Hundreds of mourners lined the streets outside the Viznitz Synagogue in Williamsburg for Yitty’s funeral Wednesday as pall bearers lifted the child-sized casket from the back of a car.
Silence fell over the tearful crowd as a prayer was said over the young victim’s casket before it was carried up the street to the house of worship.
Some men and women passed around donation baskets for the girl’s family.
“It’s just a difficult time,” one attendee said.
Karczag was heading west on Wallabout St. when he glided into the eastbound lane to make a left turn onto Franklin Ave. against the light, cops said.
Yitty was on her way home from school and was in the crosswalk with the walk light when Karczag’s Buick with Florida plates knocked her to the ground and ran her over, cops and witnesses said.
She was about three blocks home when she was fatally struck, police said.
“A guy who works at the grocery store got off his scooter [and] took his jacket off,” said witness Moshe Green. “He put it on her to stop the bleeding.”
When cops arrived, they found Yitty suffering from severe body trauma in the roadway. Medics rushed her to Brooklyn Hospital Center, but she could not be saved.
“It’s a shock, it tears me apart,” Green said. “We’re in the same community. Her father is a teacher in our school.”
The victim’s neighbors were left reeling by the tragedy.
“She was a smiling happy kid,” said a next-door neighbor who declined to give his name. “She was just heading home from school yesterday when it happened,”
“A child is gone, that’s the sad part,” he added. “It’s painful for the family to talk now.”
Karczag was less than a mile from home when he crashed, cops said.
“Sorry, I can’t comment on that,” Karczag told the Daily News Wednesday when asked about the crash.
So far this year, 33 pedestrians have been struck and killed on city streets. Four of those victims were children under the age of 18, according to city Department of Transportation data through Tuesday.
The figure was similar to last year at this time, when 32 pedestrians had died in crashes across the five boroughs.
In all of 2023, 8,619 pedestrians were injured on city streets and 102 were killed, according to Vision Zero data.
With Evan Simko-Bednarski
