Providence, RI – Jewish Student Former IDF Soldier Killed by Suspected Drunken Driver

Providence, RI – A North Providence man is accused in a drunken-driving crash that killed one Brown University student and injured another near campus early Friday morning.

Daniel Gilcreast, 23, of 35 Jacksonia Drive, was arrested after the SUV he was driving plowed into a young couple walking in the breakdown lane at Hope, Thayer and Barnes streets just before 2 a.m.

The crash killed Avi Schaefer, 21, a Brown freshman and former soldier in the Israel Defense Force, and injured his girlfriend, Marika Baltscheffsky, 19, an exchange student from Sweden, said Officer Thomas Connetta. Avi is the son of Rabbi Arthur Gross-Schaefer and his wife, Laurie, who leads Community Shul of Montecito and Santa Barbara in California.

Although Gilcreast refused a test for alcohol, the Providence police used a new state law to obtain a warrant to have his blood drawn to determine whether he was impaired.

This was the first time that a police department has used the law, which can be used in serious or deadly crashes, said Assistant Attorney General Stacey Veroni, chief of the criminal division.

Formerly, a suspected drunken-driver involved in such a crash could refuse to submit to a screening.

“This gives us a tool that we never had before,” Veroni said. “Otherwise, we’d be confined to just observations [by the police] and the field sobriety tests.” The test showed Gilcreast’s blood-alcohol level was above the .08 legal limit, said attorney general’s spokesman Michael J. Healey.

Late Friday afternoon, Gilcreast was arraigned at the Providence Police Department for driving under the influence, death resulting, and driving under the influence, causing serious bodily injury. Gilcreast was released on $25,000 surety bail, under the condition that he doesn’t drive or consume alcohol, according to the attorney general’s office.

Several of Schaefer’s grieving friends noted the irony of his death.

Before enrolling at Brown University last fall to study international relations and Middle East studies, Schaefer had left his home in Santa Barbara, Calif., to volunteer as a soldier for three years in the Israel Defense Force. He’d been a counterterrorism instructor and taught the Israeli special forces how to handle hostage situations, according to an article about him in the Jewish Advocate newspaper.

“He was able to get through all that,” said Noam Blum, a friend and former soldier, “but he couldn’t cross the street because of some idiot who was drinking.”

Blum mourned for the potential that Schaefer had to make a difference in people’s lives, such as raising $6,000 for Haiti and getting a grant to improve Israeli-Palestinian relations. Schaefer was working with a Brown professor helping to develop a new course on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He also spent several days with the SWAT team at the Providence Police Department last fall, said Chief Dean M. Esserman.

“Avi was a very special person. He was so full of life,” Blum said. “If he saw something that needed to be done, and no one was doing it, he would take initiative. He wanted to take action, educate people, and encourage people to be proactive. He’s such a leader and he wanted to inspire people to lead as well.”

University President Ruth J. Simmons called Schaefer “a young man of inordinate strength and integrity.”