The Google engineer left in a coma after he was hit in the head by a massive tree branch while taking a summer stroll in Central Park is showing signs of improvement, his family told The New York Daily News.
"He's slowly improving," mom Gwenda Blair told the paper. "We think that he's going to be okay."
Sasha Blair-Goldensohn, 33, was walking to work on the footpath between Central Park West and West Drive yesterday morning when a corroding 100-pound limb snapped off a tree and came crashing down on his head from 20-feet above.
The father of two girls was knocked unconscious immediately.
Blair-Goldensohn is in critical condition at New York Hospital as anxious family members -- including wife Rebecca -- held vigil and hoped he would wake up.
"He's progressing," uncle Marty Goldensohn, 62, told The New York Post. "He's responding to touch and command, but it'll take time."
"I'm not worried about Sasha because he has IQ to spare," Goldensohn told the New York Daily News.
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Blair-Goldensohn, who lives on West End Ave., works as a computer engineer for Google at the company's Manhattan office. He grew up in the city and went to Hunter College High School and Amherst.
He graduated from Columbia University in 2007 with a Ph.D.
"This is just horrifying," his graduate adviser Professor Kathy McKeown told The Post.
Workers at Google's Ninth Ave. offices started to worry when Blair-Goldensohn didn't show up for work yesterday, according to the paper.
"Everyone is really upset and shocked," a co-worker told The Post. "Sasha is a really great guy and very generous with his time -- and he's super smart."
The Parks Department inspected the trees in the area and said the branch that fell from the pin oak tree was rotting and the freak accident had nothing to do with inclement weather.
Blair-Goldensohn has been unconscious since the accident and his family was hoping he would "wake up," his uncle said.
"He hasn't really woken up," he said. "He's young and healthy and we're hopeful."
