Teen dies, 12 hurt in van rollover Accident on I-95 cuts short camp trip

ARGYLE – Gedalia Rosenblatt was comfortable in his seat, but when a taller fellow summer camper asked him to move, the affable 15-year-old didn’t hesitate.

That Rosenblatt is dead today, and his friend suffered only scratches, likely will haunt the Orthodox Jewish passengers – 10 boys ages 14 to 18 from New York and California and two camp counselors – who survived when the 15-passenger van they were in overturned Monday on Interstate 95.

“It shows how generous he was,” accident survivor Levi Shapiro, 17, of Brooklyn, said Monday. “It shows that if your time comes, your time comes. One minute you’re here, the next you’re not.”

Almost all of the campers were asleep, about 10 hours into traveling from Bethel Wilderness Camp in upstate New York, when the accident occurred at 7 a.m. near northbound mile marker 203.

The van veered into the median, went back across the road and down the sloped embankment, rolling over at least once and ejecting at least one occupant before it came to rest on its tires. A trailer carrying five canoes broke away from the van and stopped about 50 feet south of the vehicle near woods along the highway, Maine State Police Lt. Wesley Hussey said.

“It was pretty scary,” passenger David Litchfield said. “We were flying all over the floor and bleeding. All the windows were shattered.”

The survivors were taken to Eastern Maine Medical Center and St. Joseph Hospital in Bangor. Driver Yehoshua Hoffman, 22, and passengers Daniel Gabay and Yakov Kahan remained hospitalized. Hoffman underwent surgery at EMMC on Monday, Hussey said.

Most passengers were not wearing seat belts, said camper Raphy Davidson, 16, of Monsey, N.Y.

The camping party was planning to canoe the Penobscot River, camp at Baxter State Park near Millinocket and hike Mount Katahdin as part of a two-week trip to Maine.

Boarding a privately chartered jet at Bangor International Airport on Monday night to take them and Rosenblatt’s body back to Farmingdale, N.Y., the teens seemed slightly uncomprehending about their close call.

They “seem to be doing very well, considering,” said Bill Miller, a lay leader of Bangor’s Congregation Beth Israel who was called to EMMC to help tend to the teens’ spiritual state.

“Every time I would talk to them and ask them how they were doing they would say, ‘Good, Baruch Hashem [thank God],'” Miller said.

Frank McBride, 56, of Brewer, an inspector for the Occupational Safety and Health Administration in Bangor, was the second passer-by to stop at the accident scene. He arrived a minute after it happened. The first passer-by called 911, and McBride helped the victims until an ambulance – the first of seven called to the scene – arrived.

“I observed three men waving for someone to stop, so I stopped,” said McBride, who is trained in first aid. “I saw one person in the van who could not get out, who was bleeding from the face. He had to be removed by the Jaws of Life. I saw others on the ground.

“Some had cuts and bruises and others obviously had broken bones,” McBride said. “There were several who were in shock but did not have life-threatening injuries. They didn’t know what had happened to them.”

Isaac Litchfield, David’s father, said his son told him that “he was going crazy, had completely broke down, at the accident scene.”

“The driver [Hoffman] asked him to hold his head,” Litchfield added, “and David said, ‘If I touch you, and you’re spinally injured, I could really hurt you.'”

The cause of the accident is unknown. State police accident reconstruction specialists, forensic evidence technicians, detectives and a coroner were at the scene until almost 2 p.m., said Stephen McCausland, state police spokesman. One northbound lane of I-95 was closed for most of the morning.

“We hope to interview the driver as soon as we can,” Hussey said.

The van, canoes and debris were removed for examination, McCausland said.

As the victims arrived and were treated at EMMC, hospital workers, Miller and several members of Beth Abraham and Beth Israel synagogues worked to make them comfortable. Miller replaced yarmulkes, shoes and tefillin lost in the accident, he said.

Hospital workers obtained kosher food from Bagel Central of Bangor, which Miller said is the only kosher restaurant in the city. Synagogue members planned to be at Bangor International Airport last night and today to meet the victims’ relatives.

“We won’t know who they are, but I think we’ll be able to recognize them,” Miller said, in reference to the yarmulkes Orthodox Jews typically wear.

Family members had started to arrive at the hospital at about 5 p.m., said Bruce Freedberg, a clinical psychologist at Dorothea Dix Psychiatric Center in Bangor and a member of Beth Abraham.

The hospital was arranging to have visiting relatives stay at Riverside Inn and providing them with rental cars, officials said.

The survivors expressed profuse thanks for the kindness they had received.

“You have to import some of your personalities here to Brooklyn,” said Alan Mandel, a New York paramedic who came to Bangor to help transport injured survivors. “People here really have heart.”