Brooklyn, New York Toddler Killed by Schoolbus

"Beautiful" little Gabriel Illowitz apparently wandered in front of the idling bus at the corner of Bedford Avenue and Heyward Street in Williamsburg at around 3:20 p.m. while his mom was getting her other two children off, police and relatives said.

The boy was crushed under the wheels moments later when the unsuspecting driver pulled out, authorities said.

The toddler's horrified mom started screaming, "A car hit my child!" and "Hatzolah!" - the name of an Orthodox Jewish ambulance service - witnesses said.

The shaken bus driver, who was not charged, said he didn't know he had hit anyone because he felt no impact.

"I didn't see anything or hear anything," said the driver, who refused to give his name.

"I was looking in the mirror, and I didn't see anything. The child was too small."

Neighbor Schavy Leiberman said she rushed to aid the boy's dazed mother, Ratza Illowitz, who also had been toting her infant and another 4-year-old child to the bus stop.

"She told me she took two kids off the bus and she was walking with them when she realized [Gabriel] was missing," Leiberman said.

"After two cars passed, she saw her child lying in the middle of the gutter, face down. She thought he had fallen. She picked him up and saw he was full of blood.

"He was alive, his eyes were open, and he was breathing. But he was fading."

The boy later died at Brooklyn Hospital.

Relatives said the victim was the great-grandson of Grand Rebbe Raphael Blum of Bedford Hills.

Blum was known for founding Talmud Kasho, the school from which his two older great-grandchildren - the victim's siblings - had been traveling on the bus.

Gabriel attended nursery school there.

The children's aunt, Rachel Mertz, called Gabriel "very friendly and playful."