Brooklyn developer named as driver who fatally hit Holocaust survivor

A prominent real estate developer struck and killed a 99-year-old holocaust survivor while driving in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Manhattan Beach on Saturday.

Police sources told the New York Daily News developer Pytor Yadgarov was behind the wheel of his BMW on Oriental Boulevard at 4:45 pm when he struck Jack Mikulincer as he was crossing the road in his motorized wheelchair.

Yadgarov has not been charged in the fatal crash. While the Daily News reported the developer has a record of speeding, with 1o speeding camera tickets distributed to the license plate on his BMW, cops do not know how fast he was going when he struck Mikulincer, who was crossing a road without a crosswalk.

Mikulciner, who survived the Nazi invasion of Hungary, was on his way to the Manhattan Beach Jewish Center to observe the sabbath, according to The New York Times. He fought in two wars, serving with the Russian Army during World War II before being placed in the Stanisławów Ghetto, and later with the Israeli Army during Israel’s war for independence, according to The Times. 

Mikulciner’s late wife, a survivor of Auschwitz, was herself a victim of a traffic crash 30 years ago when she was T-boned in a car on the way to a Hanukkah celebration in Queens. She never fully recovered from the crash and died in 2011, according to the Daily News. 

“I can’t believe my grandfather, who survived so much, was killed in a car accident,” Elke Weiss, Mikulciner’s grandchild, told the Times. 

Yadgarov is the principal of PYE Properties, a development firm based in Coney Island that “acquires distressed, vacant properties and development sites with an upside in value,” according to its website.

Among its more prominent ongoing projects has been the redevelopment of the Shore Theater on Surf Avenue in Coney Island, a towering, historic theater in Coney Island’s amusement district that has sat vacant since the 1970s.

The firm plans to turn the theater into a high-end hotel with a rooftop pool, spa, banquet hall, and restaurants.

PYE Properties did not respond to Inman’s requests for comment regarding the fatal crash.

Email Ben Verde