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A Holocaust survivor died February 26, 2014, when he was struck by a school bus in Silver Spring. Elia Miranski, 91, was attempting to cross an intersection on foot with his walker when he was hit. Montgomery County Police are continuing to investigate the circumstances surrounding the fatal accident.
The Silver Spring accident occurred around 2:20 p.m. on Wednesday. Miranski was crossing Columbia Pike (U.S. 29) at Tech Road. He was using the crosswalk and had made it across all five southbound lanes and into the center median. As he attempted to continue to cross the northbound lanes, he was struck by a Howard County school bus. Miranski died later at a local hospital.
An initial police investigation showed that the bus driver, 52-year-old Lori Jean Latimer of Elkridge, did have a green light when the accident occurred. Neither Latimer nor any of the 14 students from Hammond Middle School were injured. The students were on their way home from a field trip to the White House.
Miranski was born in Poland in 1922. He lost most of his family in the Holocaust, escaping from German soldiers with his last living brother by hiding out in a swamp. Shortly after that, he joined a Soviet group blowing up railroad tracks to stop the Germans from advancing in World War II. He later moved to Israel, where he hid in a bunker during the 1973 Yom Kippur War. He moved to the U.S. in 1995 and recently recorded an oral history for the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. His wife of 60 years died three years ago.
We express our sympathies to the family of Mr. Miranski in their time of grief.