http://www.nyjournalnews.com/newsroom/062704/a0127boydrowns.htmlToddler drowns at Yeshiva
By MELISSA KLEIN, SHAWN COHEN AND AMY SARA CLARK
THE JOURNAL NEWS
(Original publication: June 27, 2004)
YORKTOWN — A Brooklyn toddler drowned yesterday after he disappeared at a religious boarding school, prompting a frantic search that ended when students found him in a pond on the campus.
The 2 1/2-year-old boy, Amrom Ganzfried, was attending Sabbath services at Yeshiva Kehilath Yakov and went outside about 10 a.m. with his 6-year-old brother and 12-year-old cousin, police said. But when the two youngsters returned without Amrom, his father alerted others in the synagogue and touched off the search.
The parents, Shlomo and Faigy Ganzfried, were joined by students and visitors who combed the 110-acre property for the missing youngster, intermittently searching and then praying in the synagogue for his safe return. They were joined by students from another yeshiva nearby who, because of the emergency, broke their prohibition about traveling on the Jewish Sabbath and came to help.
Yorktown police brought in a K-9 unit, and state police responded with a helicopter. Volunteers from the Yorktown Fire Department and the department's dive team also searched the grounds at 341 Illington Road.
The boy was found about 1:30 p.m. by two teenage students. He was unconscious underwater in a shallow area of a pond, police said. The area had been previously searched, and several students last night said they had walked by the lake but did not see Amrom.
Joe Rose, a 17-year-old student, said he had been praying, saying special psalms, in the synagogue when someone came in yelling that the boy had been found. Rose said he ran to the lake and saw paramedics working on Amrom.
"I'm just hoping to God this shouldn't happen again," he said, walking with friends along a rocky, tree-lined path that leads to the pond. Students said no one swims in the pond, which is covered with algae.
Paramedics placed Amrom on a grassy field near the pond and tried to revive him, but he had no vital signs, police said. He was taken by ambulance to Westchester Medical Center in Valhalla, where he was pronounced dead at 2:35 p.m.
Police said they were awaiting the results of an autopsy by the Westchester County Medical Examiner's Office to classify the death, although they said there were no obvious signs of foul play. The Medical Examiner's Office said last night that the boy was a drowning victim.
Students, dressed in traditional Hasidic garb of black hats and long black robes, described seeing Amrom playing and jumping around yesterday morning and said he was a "cute, nice boy."
"Everybody has the feeling like a mother and father," said Yankee Silverstein, a 16-year-old student at the school. "Everybody is sad."
The Ganzfried family, which could not be reached for comment last night, had been visiting from the Williamsburg section of Brooklyn, where at least some of their children attend an affiliated yeshiva by the same name. The Yorktown school, where high school-age boys live and study, invites families to spend weekends and stay in bungalows on the property during the summer as a kind of minivacation. This was the first of those summer weekends for visitors.
Martha Spitzer, who lives upstairs from the Ganzfrieds and whose son went to school with Amrom at the yeshiva in Brooklyn, lamented the death of a child she described as a "good, friendly boy." He would sometimes play with her children and liked to dress up in his siblings' clothing. He was one of seven children.
"He was the cutest little boy," Spitzer said. "He was always with a smile."
Complete funeral information was not immediately available, but people in the neighborhood said last night that it would be today, in keeping with Jewish tradition.
Moshe Kolman, who attends synagogue with the family in Williamsburg, said he shared in the family's grieving.
"It's shocking," he said after last night's services marking the end of the Sabbath. "I have two children at home, and I know what it would feel like to lose one of them."
The Yorktown school is located south of the Croton Reservoir in the Kitchawan section. A map of the area shows a body of water called "Dream Lake" on the school property.
The property was once an estate and later became the Wiltwyck School for boys. The yeshiva bought the grounds about 20 years ago.
Eight years ago, neighbors opposed the school's plan to build 24 residences for teachers on the property. At the time the school was found by the town to have safety and maintenance violations, such as apartments created in former stables and storage sheds.
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