Montclair fatal crash victim to be honored through 5K race

North Jersey | Dan Prochilo

Alexandra Niles waited for about two hours on March 30, 2011, as doctors at St. Joseph's Regional Medical Center in Paterson performed surgery on her mother, who had been hit by a van while walking to catch a train at the Upper Montclair Train Station.

Betsy Niles, who had turned 60 years old on Jan. 4, suffered a serious head injury from the collision. The van had been heading down Bellevue Avenue toward Valley Road and made a left to enter the parking lot across the street from the Bellevue Theater when it struck her at 8 a.m., after the driver failed to see Niles in the crosswalk "because of the sun," the victim's daughter said. The driver stopped and called 911.

Although it had been "a low-impact collision," the crash knocked Betsy Niles over, left her unconscious, and inflicted an injury that was catastrophic, according to Alexandra Niles.

At the hospital, it took surgeons a couple of hours to open one side of the victim's skull to relieve the pressure on her brain, which was bleeding and swollen.

After the procedure, a neurosurgeon told the family that doctors had performed a second scan and "were worried there would be bleeding on the other side of her brain" as well, recalled Alexandra Niles.

Read more: http://www.northjersey.com/news/155806985_One_life_lost__other_lives_saved.html?page=all

Photo: Montclair resident Betsy Niles sails during a trip to the Caribbean. Niles was the victim of a deadly motor-vehicle accident while walking in Montclair in March 2011, and her family decided to donate her organs for transplant.