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Sheldon Mermelstein, 75, passed away around 2 p.m. Saturday, Deputy Mayor Elie Katz said.
“Our hearts are broken,” his daughter-in-law, Ayelet Schwartz Mermelstein, wrote in tribute. “May his memory be a blessing.”
Mermelstein and Micah Kaufman, 41, both members of congregation Beth Aron on Queen Anne Road, were coming from Congregation Bnai Yeshurun when they were struck by a sedan while crossing West Englewood Avenue around 6:20 p.m. Thursday, authorities said.
Both sustained critical head injuries, they said.
The 35-year-old Teaneck driver of the 2018 Hyundai Sonata remained at the scene and cooperated, township Police Chief Glenn O’Reilly said.
Kaufman remained in a coma in the Intensive Care Unit at Hackensack University Medical Center on Sunday, friends said.
The driver wasn't considered at fault in the crash, which occurred at "an area of major concern" where a rabbi was struck by a vehicle last week, Katz said.
It was "possible that they didn’t see each other," the deputy major said.
A funeral for Mermelstein was held Sunday at Congregation Beth Aaron, with burial scheduled in Eretz HaChaim cemetery in Israel on Monday. The family will be returning to Teaneck on Dec. 24 and will sit shiva at the Mermelstein home on Queen Anne Road until Dec. 30, , according to his obituary.
Kaufman was supposed to be among several altruistic kidney donors honored in town Saturday night at a “Celebration of Life” sponsored by Brooklyn-based Renewal, which arranges kidney donations within the Jewish community.
Earlier this year, he donated a kidney to an 85-year-old grandmother of two who’d been on dialysis for nearly two years as she waited for a kidney.
SEE: Teaneck Man Critically Injured In Double-Pedestrian Crash Had Donated Kidney To Grandmother
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