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Hundreds Mourn 10-Year-Old Girl Fatally Struck by Car in Borough Park

By  Ben Fractenberg and Julie  Shapiro | December 3, 2014 4:56pm 

 Blima Friedman, 10, was killed and her mother was seriously hurt when they were hit by a car. Blima's funeral was held in Borough Park Dec. 3, 2014.
Blima Friedman Funeral
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BOROUGH PARK — Hundreds of people packed into a Borough Park funeral home Wednesday to mourn a 10-year-old girl who was fatally hit by a car in a crash that also seriously injured her pregnant mother.

Grieving relatives and friends filled the Shomrie Hadas funeral home at 14th and 38th streets, where Blima Friedman's body rested in a casket covered in a blue shroud. 

"As Brooklynites, we mourn with them and are here for them," said Borough President Eric Adams, who attended the funeral.

So many people filed in the funeral home in that a side door had to be opened because there wasn't any more room inside.

Blima was crossing 60th Street near Eighth Avenue Tuesday night with her 33-year-old mother, Sara, when a valet who was driving someone else's minivan without permission slammed into them, killing Blima, police said.

Blima's mother suffered a punctured liver and fractured ribs in the crash and was in a medically induced coma Wednesday, according to the family's rabbi. She had not been told of Blima's death, but she gave birth to a baby girl who was in stable condition, police and Rabbi Jack Meyer said.

Yakov Mordechai, Blima's father and Sara's husband, spoke last at the funeral.

"My wife should have a complete and speedy recovery with the help of God," Mordechai, a father of six, told the crowd in Yiddish. "The new baby should plead with God to help our family recover."

State Assemblyman Dov Hikind said afterward that Mordechai also spoke about "faith, about going on."

"It broke my heart to hear him," Hikind said.

After the funeral, Yosi Nagel, a member of the community, described the family as "wonderful, wonderful people."

"We should really think about what happened, do the right thing," he said, summarizing what the rabbi had said at the funeral.

The driver who hit Blima and her mother was Bilal Ghumman, 22, a valet who was in a minivan he didn't have permission to drive, police said. Ghumman was arrested and charged with driving a car without the owner's permission. It was not immediately clear if he was working when he took the car.