Sam Blyakher, 33, founder of the Internet movie site Fandango, and wife Rebecca, 32; 10-month-old daughter in critical condition
Shrike!
Horrific wreck hurts baby girl, now an orphan
BY TAMER EL-GHOBASHY and ADAM LISBERG
DAILY NEWS STAFF WRITERS
http://www.nydailynews.com/10-11-2006/news/story/460549p-387480c.html
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/339-crash11.jpg
Cops survey wreck that hurt 10-month-old Nava Blyakher and killed
parents Sam and Rebecca.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/419-sam11.jpg
High school photos of Sam...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/539-rebecca11.jpg
...and Rebecca
The 10-month-old daughter of a founder of the Internet movie site
Fandango lay in critical condition yesterday, a day after the
successful Manhattan investor and his brilliant wife were killed
upstate in a horrific car crash.
Nava Rose Blyakher was strapped safely in a car seat Monday when an
SUV raced across the median of an Orange County highway and slammed
head-on into her parents' rental car - sending it careening into
another truck, police said.
Nava's parents - childhood sweethearts Sam Blyakher, 33, and his
neuroscientist wife, Rebecca, 32 - were killed by the impact. The
infant suffered a fractured skull and several broken bones.
"They were the perfect couple - happily married, proud parents. ... It
just makes you so sad," said Sam Blyakher's close friend Michael
Kahan, 32. "They were phenomenal people. It's a loss to me, to the
baby and to the world."
Rebecca Blyakher was sitting in the backseat behind her husband so she
could dote on their daughter as they drove to their upper East Side
home after visiting Sam Blyakher's parents in the Poconos.
A Chevy Trailblazer crossed the median on an accident-prone stretch of
Route 17 in Orange County and rammed their car about 1:40 p.m. A
passing pickup truck then hit the car, said Police Senior Investigator
John Van Der Molen.
Rebecca Blyakher died wearing a $20 silver locket with a photo of her
and her husband inside. He gave her the locket when she was just 18,
Kahan said.
"With all his success, the piece of jewelry she valued the most was
that locket," Kahan said. "It's just a heartbreaking story."
Nava was airlifted to Westchester Medical Center, where her
grandparents huddled yesterday. Friends said the girl looks like her
mother, with big, lively eyes and a thatch of dark, curly hair.
"She sustained some head trauma, and we know she has a broken arm and
two broken legs, even in a car seat properly strapped in," Van Der
Molen said. "The force of the impact was that severe."
Cops were still probing why SUV driver Osvaldo Felix-Castro, 41, of
Congers, drove out of his lane and crossed the median, apparently
without ever braking. In the past 18 months, four other people have
died in similar crashes within a half mile of Monday's wreck, police
said.
Sam Blyakher and his wife grew up a few blocks apart in Graniteville,
S.I., and fell in love at Port Richmond High School, even going to the
senior prom together, friends said.
"He was one of those lucky guys who always knew what he wanted in
life, and he knew he wanted to marry Rebecca," said high school friend
Jason Bass, 32. "They got married and did what they wanted to do and
were successful at it. This is a true tragedy."
The son of Russian immigrants, Sam Blyakher came to America as a
7-year-old who spoke no English. He helped start Fandango in the late
1990s and then became a partner at venture capital firm Accretive LLC
in midtown.
"He was extremely successful at a very young age," said Michael Cline,
his boss. "He succeeded at the American Dream. He became a partner
when he was 29."
Rebecca Blyakher worked at the Yale-affiliated Haskins Laboratories in
Connecticut, studying the neuroscience of how children learn to read,
said the lab's CEO, Philip Rubin.
"She was a star - a young and rising star in the field," Rubin said.
The couple's parents were preparing funeral arrangements yesterday as
Accretive set up a trust fund to help raise Nava.
"It's everybody's nightmare," said family friend Joe Busacca, 61.
"It's tragic that this happened to them."
With Nicole Bode, Austin Fenner, Adam Playford and Ethan Rouen
Originally published on October 11, 2006
--
Wanna buy some mandies, Bob?
Kent
> S.I.,
What is "S.I."?
danny burstein
>What is "S.I."?
Staten Island, one of NYC's five boroughs.
--
_____________________________________________________
Knowledge may be power, but communications is the key
dan...@panix.com
[to foil spammers, my address has been double rot-13 encoded]
Kent
"danny burstein" <dan...@panix.com> wrote in message
news:egqq28$ncs$1...@reader1.panix.com...
> In <7JCdnZz_PrdCd63Y...@comcast.com> "Kent"
> <ke...@ixnayonthesamspay-deadoraliveinfo.com> writes:
>
>>> Sam Blyakher and his wife grew up a few blocks apart in Graniteville,
>>> S.I.,
>
>>What is "S.I."?
>
> Staten Island, one of NYC's five boroughs.
>
Thanks.