January 24, 2006 -- Andrea Bronfman, a prominent philanthropist and the wife of billionaire former Seagram co-chairman Charles Bronfman, was struck by a cab and killed yesterday while crossing Fifth Avenue just steps from her palatial apartment.
Bronfman, 60, who was walking her dog, Yoffi, had just stepped off the curb at East 65th Street when she was hit at 6:48 a.m. by a black livery cab as it made a left turn from Fifth Avenue, police said.
She was rushed to New York Hospital with pelvic injuries, a lacerated liver and broken ribs. She later died on the operating table, officials said.
She suffered heavy internal bleeding and required more than a dozen units of blood, sources said.
The cabdriver, Amarjit Singh, 36, was not immediately issued a summons, but police said the investigation was ongoing.
Bronfman, a major supporter of Israel, will be buried Friday in Jerusalem, where she and her husband, an heir to a Seagram fortune worth an estimated $2.8 billion, also had a home. In 2003, the Bronfmans were named honorary citizens of the city.
"It's something you don't believe," said a friend, Irving Abella, head of Canadian studies at York University in Toronto.
"She was a generous, formidable, lovable, kind person who was prepared to do anything for anybody."
Abella said he last saw Bronfman, known to friends as Andy, at a family dinner Friday in the couple's $18 million, 15-room apartment, which occupies two floors of 838 Fifth Avenue near 65th Street.
"It was a small family dinner with their grandchildren over. And she was loving and adorable with her grandson. He's 5. They were having a great time," Abella said. "She and her husband were just cooing, and it was wonderful."
Bronfman was barely 5-foot-2, but in many ways, she was larger than life. She organized major charities both in New York and in Montreal, where she lived for 30 years.
"She was small, but dynamic and energetic and fiery and passionate and, at the same time, charming and loving and compassionate," Abella said.
After 9/11, she founded the Gift of New York, which provided free admission to arts, entertainment and sports events to the bereaved families of the terror attacks' victims.
In 2003, she founded the Association for Israel's Decorative Arts, aimed at helping Israeli artists get exposure in North American galleries.
She and her husband founded Birthright Israel, a program giving 18- to 26-year-olds the chance to live in Israel. Almost 100,000 people have taken part.
Born Andrea Morrison in London in 1945, Bronfman moved to Montreal as a young woman to marry a clothing maker. Charles Bronfman was an usher at the wedding.
In 1982, Andrea married Charles, who was 14 years her senior, in Montreal. It was the second marriage for both.
The couple, who have five children and six grandchildren between them, moved to New York in 1998 and bought their apartment a year later. Since then, they had devoted themselves to charity.
A memorial service will be held at 11 a.m. tomorrow at the B'nai Jeshurun synagogue on West 88th Street.
Additional reporting by Joe McGurk and Larry Celona
kate.sheehy@nypost.com
