New York Hatzolah Rush to Save Badly Wounded Crash Victim…in Virginia!

NEW YORK (VINnews) — A Jew from Brooklyn was badly wounded in a car crash this past Sunday. The accident took place in a small random town in Virginia, yet amazingly, within a short time, devoted Hatzalah members from New York were at his bedside.

The Williamsburg man wrote a letter of gratitude which starts “Dear Klal Yisrael”, to express his deep appreciation.

He had been traveling with several colleagues when the rough wintry storm made driving conditions treacherous. They decided to go to a hotel to wait out the storm, however “Hashem wanted it differently.” The car spun out of control, they hit a guardrail with extreme force, and the car flipped over three times.

The man was thrown around violently in the back seat, and when the car came to a halt he was unable to move. It seemed like an eternity until police and fire rescue teams arrived, pulled him from the wreckage, and brought him to a small local hospital.

The victim could not breathe, he did not know what was happening, was hundreds of miles from home, surrounded by strangers, and understandably, he was terrified..

As doctors and medical personnel tried to save his life, the co-workers astutely called Hatzolah in New York, hoping somehow to have him transferred to a top hospital back home.

Amazingly, the victim was soon greeted by the unlikely sight of “heimishe” Hatzolah members from NY, ready to fly him back and bring him to Bellevue Trauma Center. Despite his serious injuries, the Hatzolah responders were able to bring him to the airport and help him onto a Hatzolah airplane, which he apparently was not aware even existed.

Overcome with emotion, the victim started crying for the first time, “tears of thanks to HKBH for not only saving my life but for sending these beautiful Malachim to rescue me and bring me home.”

The man was grateful beyond words and expressed a huge amount of hakaras hatov to Hashem and to the incredible Hatzolah air team.

An interesting footnote to the story, while the victim was in the hospital, his coworkers reached out to Rabbi Zvi Yaakov Zwiebel of the “local” Chabad. Rabbi Zwiebel’s wife immediately cooked food, and he drove an hour to the hospital to deliver it. He was not able to see the victim, who had tested positive for Covid at the hospital, however he spoke with him on the phone for a while, presumably offering comfort and reassurance.

While the Rabbi was there, he bumped into a hospital administrator whom he discovered was Jewish. The two men exchanged numbers and the Rabbi plans to follow up in the near future, and presumably be mekareiv him.