A 77-year-old Brooklyn grandfather was crushed to death by his own car during a dispute over a parking space last week, but was a “very gentle” man who remained calm, his son told the Post.
Yosif Lontzman said in an interview Tuesday that he would not have yelled at the woman in the other car during Thursday’s parking beef in Sheepshead Bay because he didn’t want her to get angry. “They have so much respect for him,” his grieving son Mark said in an interview Tuesday.
“My father was a very, very gentle-tempered person throughout his life,” Mark Lontzman said. “No one knows what he was thinking or what he was feeling. As far as I know him, he probably wouldn’t come out and talk to a woman if it was about parking.” Sho.
“He would do it in a civil manner, not in a fit of anger or rage, especially towards women,” he said. “He has too much respect for women to let her anger him out. That was never like him.”
Old man Rontzman, a doting grandfather who grew up in Kazakhstan, got out of his Subaru Forester and got behind the wheel of a second car during a disagreement over parking at Avenue W and Ocean Avenue around 4 p.m. I spoke with a 43-year-old woman who was According to police, at 1:30 p.m.
As the man got out of his car, the still-moving vehicle struck him, pinning him between the Subaru and the woman’s Nissan Altima, police said.
Employees at a local store said the Nissan driver was crying and tried to help, but to no avail.
“She was trying to help,” said the worker, speaking on condition of anonymity. “She put her foot on the brake.
“She was screaming, ‘Help, help, help,'” she said. “He was a good guy. It hurts. He’s a human being. He had children. He had grandchildren.”
He was rushed to New York University Langone Hospital in Brooklyn, where he was pronounced dead.
No charges were filed in this freak accident.
“I couldn’t believe it at first,” the son said. “You don’t get shocked right away, but the sadness grows day by day until you realize he’s not here.
Marc Lontsman added: “We are faced with a situation where we don’t know what actually happened. The uncertainty of what happened makes it more difficult to deal with.” .
Yosef Lontzman’s family has roots in Ukraine and Belarus, but his family fled Jewish persecution and ended up in Kazakhstan, where he grew up and met his future wife, his son said.
“My mother said she was looking for a good-looking Jewish husband who was family-oriented, determined, and capable of building and supporting a family,” he said. “They were completely one team.
“They were a good match. They completed each other,” the son said. “When she died, a part of him died with her. It was like half of him disappeared.”
His grandfather immigrated to the United States in 1989 to build a better life for his family and worked in construction.
He doted on his two grandchildren, a 12-year-old girl and a 7-year-old boy. Mark Lontzman said the two young men were very attached and didn’t feel ready to tell her grandpa had died yet.
“He was helping them from the time they were born. He would push them around in strollers. He would take my daughter to ballet class. He took my son to the playground,” he said. “When he came to see my kids and heard my son’s voice, he ran over and hugged his son.
“My son used to say ‘Grandpa,'” he added. “We haven’t even told them yet. They wanted to go to my father for Passover. They asked, ‘Why didn’t you go?’ We told them that grandpa was not feeling well.
“We have to tell them right away.”
