A 91-year-old Holocaust survivor died after being struck by a school bus in Montgomery County, Md., Wednesday afternoon.
With the help of his walker, Elia Miranski was crossing Columbia Pike at Tech Road in Silver Spring about 2:20 p.m. when he was struck by a school bus contracted by Howard County Public Schools. Miranski, who was going shopping, safely crossed the southbound lanes before continuing across the northbound lanes, where he was struck.
He was taken to a local hospital where he died.
Fourteen students and two employees from Hammond Middle School in Laurel were on the bus, which was returning from a field trip to the White House, but none of them was injured. Another bus went to the scene to pick up the students and returned them to school.
Police interviewed the bus driver, 52-year-old Lori Jean Latimer, and witnesses, News4 Washington's Kristin Wright reported. The preliminary investigation determined the bus had a solid green light and there's no reason to believe the crosswalk signal malfunctioned. Speed is not believed to be a factor, either.
"It's a long span of lanes," Montgomery County Police Capt. Paul Starks said. "There's possibly, if you count the turn lanes and the shoulders, about 10 lanes to cross."
Miranski's family confirmed to News4 Washington's Shomari Stone that he was a Holocaust survivor. The family had no other comment.
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In May, Gail Schwartz interviewed Miranski for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He described how Germans killed his parents and how he and is brother escaped a ghetto set up in a castle.
"He was able to escape and jumped out of a window," Schwartz said.
Miranski stayed in Poland after the war until moving to Israel in 1972. He moved to the United States in 1995.
