WATERBURY – Two high school students at Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel in Waterbury were killed in the early hours of the morning on Monday, Nov. 7 when the car they were driving veered off I-84 in Danbury.
Daniel King, 15, and Eli Schonbrun, 16, both residents of Flatbush, N.Y., were pronounced dead at the scene early Monday morning, following the rollover of a van that was carrying 11 young students from both the high school and the beis medrash back to the yeshiva after spending Shabbat with their families in New York. The boys were traveling in a 1998 Ford Club Wagon, a vehicle notorious for rollovers. The highway was shut down for several hours and reopened just before 4 a.m. Connecticut State Police were investigating the accident at press time.
Besides King and Schonbrun, the nine other students were all transported to the hospital with various injuries. Two listed originally as critical are now in stable condition.
Thousands attended the funerals, which took place Monday afternoon in Borough Park.
“We are in a state of shock and mourning,” said Rabbi Shalom Siegfried, vice president of Yeshiva Ateres Shmuel. “We have the families and everyone in our tefillos (prayers) and we hope to be able to move forward.”
Rabbi Siegfried confirmed that the driver of the van, Mark Sperling, was a student in the yeshiva.
This is the second time that a car crash has claimed the life of a young man at the Waterbury yeshiva.  Shaya Twerski was killed in March 2003.