Family Matriarch, 99, Who Fled Russia After World War II, Dies After Being Fatally Struck by Allegedly Unlicensed Driver

A 99-year-old woman died nearly two weeks after she was struck by an unlicensed driver in Brooklyn, N.Y.

Taibel Brod, 99, a Hasidic Jewish woman who fled Russia after World War II, was struck while crossing Montgomery St. in Crown Heights on Tuesday, April 8, around 8:30 p.m., a New York Police Department spokesman said.

She was transported to Maimonides Medical Center, where she was initially listed in stable condition. But she succumbed to her injuries 12 days later and died on Sunday, April 20.

The matriarch was allegedly hit by Menachem Shagalow, a 65-year-old man who was driving a 2023 GMC Yukon SUV traveling south on Brooklyn Ave. That same day, he was charged with aggravated unlicensed operator, failure to exercise due care and unlicensed operation of a motor vehicle, a NYPD spokesman said.

Taibel, a longtime resident of Crown Heights, Brooklyn, was survived by her large Chabad family, including her five children and several grandchildren, according to her obituary. 

Taibel was born in Kremenchuk, Ukraine. She came to the U.S. after World War II, when she fled Russia on an escape train to Poland, her family said, per the New York Daily News. 

In 1946, she ended up in the displaced persons camp of Pocking, in Germany. There, she married her husband, Chatzkel Brod, and gave birth to her two older daughters, her son Yisroel Brod said, per the Daily News. She moved to New York in 1951.

The NYPD lists her age as 101 at the time of her death. Her children believe she was 99 because when she escaped Russia, she used another person’s passport. Her actual age is unclear.

“The hardship in her youth in Russia gave her the strength to go forward. She survived communism,” her son Yosef Brod, 73, told the Daily News.

“She walked every morning from Crown Heights to Brookdale Hospital. She used to feed patients there for many many years,” Taibel’s youngest son, Yisroel Brod, 70, told NY Daily News. He called the accident a “tragedy.”

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She also fed patients at the Brookdale University Hospital Medical Center for “over 50 years day in and day out,” Yosef told the New York Post. He added that she was “very active in the community” and had “goodness and kindness going for her.”

“My mother was deeply committed to the community as a volunteer in many areas. She did a lot of praying on a daily basis,” son, Yisroel, 69, told the outlet. “A very open house and visitors would come from other countries to be in this community. She’d welcome them for a weekend, a holiday. She was a very giving person.”

“She was [a] very independent woman,” her 38-year-old grandson, also named Yisroel, said. “Extremely independent and strong. She would take the bus by herself. She was extremely independent till her last day.”