Why NYC widower wants driver charged with antisemitic hate crime months after wife was killed in hit-and-run crash
More than three months after his wife was mowed down in a shocking hit-and-run crash, a Jewish Queens man is searching for answers — and wants the accused killer charged with an antisemitic hate crime.Michael Trager, 70, and his 71-year-old wife, Cara, both members of the Hollis Hills Jewish community, were walking to a neighborhood restaurant after watching a movie on Memorial Day — when tragedy struck.A motorist going 75 mph in a 35 mph zone rammed into two other vehicles, sending one of the cars into the couple and mortally wounding Cara, who died days later.“Physically I’m lucky to be alive,” the victim’s distraught widower said in a recent sit-down interview.“Mentally, honestly, I had a really wonderful marriage and it’s very hard to lose somebody that you really loved.“Am I not dead?” Trager told The Post.
“It makes you think and for the first time in 47 years, I’m alone and that’s not the way I wanted things to go out for her, for sure. Because you don’t get the chance to say goodbye.“And the fact that she died in this way is unbelievable,” he said.
“Because you couldn’t be any more pro-Jewish than she was.”Trager said that detail is relevant because accused killer driver Dawood Faisal, 22, who is now being held on Rikers Island on manslaughter and other charges, had allegedly vandalized a Jewish bagel shop in the neighborhood twice in the weeks before the fatal crash.The grieving widower believes those alleged crimes and the fact that it was a known Jewish neighborhood, raise troubling questions about the suspect’s motive.“What I am alleging was that he was in a Jewish area, a very heavy Jewish,” he said.
“And though he did not necessarily try to kill Cara Trager or injure Michael Trager or kill Michael Trager for that matter, it was a good likelihood that if he was gonna do that activity, it’s going to be more than likely hurt a Jewish person.”The Tragers spent May 25 watching the 1946 war romance film ...