Days after the death of their 13-year-old son, Ari, who was hit by a Long Island Rail Road (LIRR) train, Roger and Yaffa Kraft vowed to sue the railroad for not doing enough to prevent kids from climbing up to the tracks.
Had he been unable to enter the property surrounding the railroad tracks in a section that runs above 63rd Drive in Rego Park, Ari could still be alive, his grief-stricken father told the media last week. According to published reports, the family plans to begin looking into a lawsuit at the end of a seven-day shiva, following Ari’s funeral on Sunday, January 7.
“It’s really sad that it had to take a life for them [the Long Island Rail Road (LIRR)] to do something about it,” said Vito Banca, who said he knew both Ari and his family. “Ari’s parents are destroyed by this.”
LIRR spokesperson Susan McGowen said that the railroad, which is owned by the MTA, is not required to put up fences around railroad tracks and cannot police all of its 701 miles of track.
Still, McGowen said that the LIRR routinely repairs an estimated 100 miles of chain-link fences surrounding the tracks, as well as 15 miles of high-security fencing – thick, tightly-woven fence that is harder to climb – along the tracks’ right of way. In 2006, the LIRR spent $400,000 in repairs to fencing system-wide, she said.
“Our hearts go out to the family,” McGowen said. “It is a very tragic situation.”
Currently, the LIRR erects fences in areas that are considered “sensitive” – locations that have a history of trespassing – based on complaints called into the public affairs office and opinions of LIRR engineers and MTA police. Some of the fencing surrounding the LIRR properties is owned by local residents, and in these instances, the private owners typically make repairs to their own fences, McGowen said.
However, one local lawmaker, Councilmember John Liu, Chair of the City Council’s Transportation Committee, hopes to change this and push the LIRR to install and repair fencing along all of their tracks.
“This manifests the problem that Queens residents have been complaining of for a long time, that the LIRR does not maintain its facilities in Queens well,” Liu said.
“Whether it is wide gaps that people have to step over to get onto trains, or gaps in fences that allow kids to get onto tracks, or dilapidated stations, or filthy yards and facilities, the LIRR needs to do a better job of keeping the facilities in good order,” Liu said.
“The problem has been the holes in the fence for 15 years,” Banca said, describing how the section of railway had been a hangout for people to get drunk and do drugs a few years back.
In that section of the right of way, there are four active railroad tracks parallel to one another – two eastbound and two westbound.
Police believe that Ari had been crossing the third track, rushing home so as not to be late for Sabbath dinner with his parents, when he missed being hit by a train on the third track, which obscured his view of an oncoming train on the fourth track.
Ari was hit by an eastbound train heading to Huntington, Long Island at about 5:40 p.m. on Friday, January 5. According to friends who spoke to the media after the accident, Ari had climbed up to the railroad tracks – between Austin and Alderton Streets where the train is elevated above 63rd Drive – to spray paint his tag, “Kos.”
“[His best friend] most likely saw what happened, and he’s not doing well,” Banca said.
On Saturday, January 6, railroad officials replaced a 37-foot section of chain-link fence and removed overgrown shrubbery around the 63rd Drive area and repaired a two-foot section of privately-owned stockade fencing at one of four possible entry points to the section of tracks, which had served as the Rego Park station until 1962.
The following day, relatives and friends attended the boy’s funeral – in accordance with Jewish tradition, the deceased must be buried within two days of death. At the funeral, Martin Mayerson, Headmaster of the Solomon Schechter School of Queens where Ari was a student, and Rabbi Albert Thayler, spoke about the boy, trying to console Ari’s parents.
“Children can give us the greatest happiness and children can give us the greatest sadness,” Thayler said, according to published reports.
Friends and neighbors remembered Ari as a computer whiz who hoped to attend either Stuyvesant High School in Manhattan or Bronx High School of Science.
“His mother put his report card on the fridge,” said 14-year-old Gill Silverberg. “His average was almost 95 in every subject.”
Long Island resident Silverberg said that he met Ari two years ago through their fathers, who worked at the same company.
“One day he [my dad] told me that his good friend had a son my age, so I went with my dad to meet up,” Silverberg said. “It turns out that we both liked computers, skateboarding, and we were both Israeli … He [Ari] spoke fluent Hebrew, just like me.”
They became good friends, traveling into Manhattan to the Riverside skateboarding park on the upper west side with their dads on Sundays and often skateboarded together in Rego Park.
“He [Ari] was always trying to do a heel flip; he was so close, every time,” Silverberg said.
“Since I live on Long Island, he didn’t come here much, but when he did, he instantly got along with my friends,” Silverberg said. “He was really popular. Everybody knew who Ari was.”
Twenty-year-old Isaac Aronov, who said his younger brother had been good friends with Ari, said he was angered that the media portrayed Ari as a “graffiti kid.”
“He’s not like that,” Aronov said. “He was an extremely good kid, super intelligent, well-mannered.”
Parents of boy killed by LIRR train vow suit
By Christina Santucci
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