Add The New York Post on Google No one will ever know the exact cause of death of the Long Island mom and teacher who perished when her car plunged into a pool — because kin opted out of an autopsy, a relative told The Post on Tuesday.
Beloved Nassau County educator and married mother of four Allison Rahmani, 40, is believed to have suffered some kind of medical episode Friday before she lost control of her SUV and drove into the family’s backyard pool, sources close to the situation have said.
But exactly what happened to her will remain a mystery, given the family’s Jewish Orthodox faith, according to a man who identified himself as a relative outside the clan’s Hewlett home.
“There is no autopsy,” the relative said. “We don’t allow autopsy. There will never be an autopsy done, so there is no cause of death. No one will ever know.”
Many Orthodox Jews believe in quick burials and consider autopsies a violation of the body. Rahmani was buried Sunday.
Under New York State Public Health law, the families of the deceased have a right to block authorities from performing autopsies on religious grounds unless it is necessary for a criminal investigation or if there is a public health benefit for doing so.
Authorities have determined that Rahmani’s death was the result of a tragic accident, and there is no criminal investigation nor cause for one, thus no grounds for a court-ordered autopsy.
A similar no-autopsy scenario played out in 2024 in the death of embattled attorney Salvatore Strazzullo, the infamous “Night-Life Lawyer,” who was found dead in his parents’ Brooklyn garage in an apparent suicide.
Strazzullo, 52, was facing fraud charges at the time, and questions surfaced about his suspicious death, but his deeply religious Catholic family refused to allow an autopsy on religious grounds — leaving the city medical examiner no choice but to declare the cause of death as “undetermined.”
In Rahmani’s case, police said the mother was able to call 911 after driving into the family’s backyard swimming pool but later died in the ambulance.
She was math coordinator at the Hebrew Academy of the Five Towns in Rockaway.
A funeral service was held for her Sunday at Boulevard-Riverside Chapels in Hewlett.
