SUV crashes into office;
doctor hurt
Pediatrician, 53, pinned behind desk
Posted by the Asbury
Park Press on 11/1/05
BY A. SCOTT FERGUSON
STAFF WRITER
HOWELL - A 53-year-old pediatric doctor suffered severe internal injuries Monday after a 2006 Ford Explorer smashed through the window of his office building and pinned him behind his desk, police said.
Dr. Raga F. Michael, a pediatrician who has practiced medicine in the township for at least 10 years, was rushed to Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood after Monday afternoon's accident, authorities said.
Michael suffered severe internal injuries and was undergoing emergency surgery at the hospital late Monday night. He was listed in critical condition, Officer Matthew W. Bishop of the Traffic Safety Bureau said.
The driver of the Explorer, Elaine B. Bryant, 56, of Lakewood, was not seriously injured, police said. The cause of the accident was under investigation Monday.
The accident happened just before 3 p.m. in Kent Plaza at 4780 Route 9, police said.
Bryant was driving her sport-utility vehicle east in the southern side of the parking lot. As she tried to make a right turn into a parking space, for reasons that remain unclear, the Explorer began to accelerate, police said. The vehicle then went up a curb, crossed a sidewalk and smashed through the glass wall of Kent Plaza Pediatrics, Bishop said.
Michael, a Howell resident, was sitting in a chair behind his desk when the Ford smashed through the glass wall. The force of the crash pinned Michael between his desk and the wall behind him, Bishop said.
"It's a very odd accident, obviously," Bishop said Monday. "The front of the building is glass with an aluminum frame. There's nothing in the way except a couple of shrubs, and that's not enough to stop a vehicle."
It took emergency workers from the township Police Department and its Emergency Medical Unit, Howell First Aid Squad, MONOC paramedics and the Southard Fire Department to free Michael.
Monday's accident was the second crash in which a vehicle
hit a building in that plaza within recent memory, Bishop said.
A recording on Kent Plaza Pediatrics' answering machine said the office
was closed because of an emergency and may reopen today. A township building
inspector examined the building after the crash and said it was structurally
sound, Bishop said.
Police are searching for anyone who may have seen the accident. Anyone with information should call either Officer Matthew W. Bishop or Officer Scott Brooks at the Traffic Safety Bureau, (732) 938-4575, Ext. 2896.
Doctor dies of crash injuries
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/2/05
BY BOB JORDAN
AND A. SCOTT FERGUSON
STAFF WRITERS
HOWELL - The pediatrician struck by a sport-utility vehicle that smashed
through the glass wall of his Route 9 office building has died, and the
investigation into the crash continued Tuesday, police said.
Dr. Raga F. Michael, 53, died about 7 p.m. Monday at Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood. He suffered several broken ribs and extensive internal injuries, Officer Matthew W. Bishop said.
The Monday afternoon crash remained under investigation by the township Police Department's Traffic Safety Bureau and the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office. As of Tuesday, no charges had been filed, Bishop said.
"It's just a huge loss for the community," said Marcie Nowicki of Howell, who said she was the first nurse hired by Michael when he opened his practice about 15 years ago. Nowicki said she worked for Michael for about seven years.
Michael and a colleague often provided medical care for children from families of little means, Nowicki said.
"They used to do the sports physicals for families that couldn't afford it," she said. "They did scouting camps for free and took care of people without insurance."
Nowicki said Michael's family - which includes his wife, Rhonda, and three children - "is the closest, closest family. He was such a great dad."
Michael's son, Mark, joined Howell First Aid in 2001 as a volunteer officer, Capt. Tom Campagna said.
Mark Michael is a medical student in Pennsylvania, but Campagna said, "We are all real close to Mark, and it's awful what happened to his father. He called us. He was trying to figure out how this happened."
The crash occurred about 3 p.m. Monday. The driver of a 2006 Ford Explorer, Elaine B. Bryant, 56, of Lakewood, was attempting to park her SUV inside the parking lot of Kent Plaza, when the vehicle accelerated, drove onto the sidewalk and smashed through the glass wall of the office, police said. Police are investigating the reason the SUV accelerated.
Dr. Michael, who was sitting in his chair, was pinned between his desk and the wall behind him. After rescue workers freed him, Michael was taken to Kimball, where he died from his injuries.
No patients were thought to be inside the office at the time of the crash. Bishop said it appears that Michael was in between seeing patients and was working at his desk during the crash.
"It seems that this accident was an unfortunate series of events," Bishop said Tuesday. "It's a terrible incident. He was very well-liked. We had three or four guys in the deparment that took their kids to him."
Doctor's death leaves an overwhelming void
FAMILY, PATIENTS STRUGGLING WITH LOSS
Posted by the Asbury Park Press on 11/21/05
BY A. SCOTT FERGUSON
STAFF WRITER
The day before her 14-year-old daughter's scheduled appointment, Toni
Meyer received a telephone call saying there had been an accident at
the doctor's office and it would have to be rescheduled.
Meyer, a 43-year-old mother of two from Jackson, did not give much thought to the inconvenience of rescheduling an appointment with Dr. Raga F. Michael.
"I figured a pipe broke or there were no lights or something structurally wrong with the building," Meyer recalled recently. "I didn't expect this."
While Michael was sitting at his desk in his Howell office on Halloween afternoon, a 2006 Ford Explorer, driven by a Lakewood woman, crashed through the glass exterior, pinning Michael between his desk and the wall.
A few hours later, Michael died at Kimball Medical Center in Lakewood. He was 53.
"Basically, the loss is too big and too unexpected to think of anything else right now," said Michael's wife, Randa, 47. "It's overwhelming. I sit and think it's just a bad dream and it's going to go away, but it doesn't."
Not only did Michael's death devastate his family — he and his wife have three children, including an oldest son who just finished his first year of medical school — but it also left a confusing void for his dozens of patients and their families throughout Monmouth and Ocean counties.
The feelings that Michael — a pediatric doctor who studied medicine in his native Egypt before moving to the United States — evoked among his patients can be seen in the number of flowers placed outside the still-damaged offices at Kent Plaza Pediatrics on the southbound side of Route 9.
Michael was associated with Jersey Shore University Medical Center in Neptune. Dr. Steven W. Kairys, chairman of the Children's Hospital there, wrote a letter to all of Michael's patients informing them where they could go for treatment while the office is repaired and a new primary physician is found. The hospital mailed out 1,594 letters to area families.
In an interview, Kairys said the office will likely remain closed until after the Christmas holiday.
"He was a gentleman and a professional," said Kairys, who knew Michael for three years. "You don't have many doctors who are on call seven days a week. He was very caring and polite and we want the practice to continue in the way he had established it."
Meyer saw that firsthand. Michael would constantly check up on her oldest daughter after she had surgery for a brain tumor, even though another physician performed the operation at a New York state hospital.
When her younger daughter, 12, fractured her ankle, Meyer saw the same care and compassion from Michael.
"I just loved the staff there," Meyer said. "Right now, my children don't have any physicals scheduled and I just hope they don't get sick right away. I don't know what I'm going to do. I hate to start over again."
Michael joined the staff at Jersey Shore in 1986 and had opened up his private practice the same year. With his calm, soothing manor, Michael's reputation spread by word-of-mouth and hundreds of parents brought their children to him year after year.
Michael had a way of talking to children, as well as their parents, that would put them at ease, his wife said recently.
"He knew how to talk to children," Randa Michael said. "Someone wrote in a card to me that they had never seen a 4-year-old so happy to go see his pediatrician."
Kairys knows that many of those parents and children are now facing a confusing time.
"Nobody could plan for something like this," Kairys said. "We're concerned and we're trying to alleviate their anxiety."
Like many of Michael's patients, Maria Delaney first heard about his practice through word of mouth. Later, Delaney referred many of her friends and relatives to Michael in much the same way she found him.
Before finding Michael, Delaney continued to drive from Monmouth County to her children's other doctor in Flemington, Hunterdon County. She recalled that every time she asked Michael a question, he would spend a long time going over every option for her children before the two decided on a course of treatment.
"His bedside manner was wonderful," Delaney said.
Now, the 43-year-old mother of three girls, 14-year-old twins and a 12-year-old, will have to make a change in medical care for her family for the first time in a dozen years, and she said the several friends and relatives who also saw Michael will face a similar, difficult choice.
"We all talk to each other and I'm praying that my kids don't get sick for a while," said Delaney, who lives in Freehold Township. "We should have had a backup plan, but I'm just so devastated about what just happened. I just really can't go look for one now."
Delaney's sister-in-law, Colleen Petlick, a 36-year-old mother of a 6-year-old girl and two boys, 4 and 3, expressed the same sentiment.
"It's scary to start over," Petlick, who also lives in Freehold Township and saw Michael for the past five years, said. "I trusted him with my kids and he knew them as well as I know them. It just doesn't make sense. It seems that God calls good people home."
Michael's wife estimated that more than 2,000 people came to her husband's wake earlier this month. To this day, she still receives at least a half a dozen cards in the mail from patients and friends offering their condolences.
The crash remains under investigation by Officer Matthew W. Bishop, a traffic safety officer with the Howell Police Department, and the Monmouth County Prosecutor's Office.
Investigators have taken blood from the driver, Elaine B. Bryant, 56, and the county's prosecutor's office has asked a forensic expert to examine the Ford Explorer, Bishop said.
From what police have been able to piece together, so far, Bryant was attempting to turn her sport-utility vehicle into a parking space when the vehicle accelerated, drove over the curb and some shrubbery and crashed through the window, pinning Michael between his desk and the wall.
So far, no charges have been filed, although police have 30 days from the accident to file motor vehicle summonses.
Attempts to reach Bryant for comment were unsuccessful. Several listed telephone numbers for her are no longer in service.
The accident happened on Halloween about 3 p.m., and it appears that Michael's schedule was free at the time. Most of the witnesses police have spoken to about the crash were people passing by while visiting the other businesses and offices in the plaza.
"There was no one in the waiting room," Bishop said recently. "We didn't get any witnesses who were patients of his. Most of the people we talked to were in the parking lot and going somewhere else."
A. Scott Ferguson: (732) 643-4050 or sferguson@app.com