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A crowded bus cruising back to Chinatown from Connecticut’s Mohegan Sun casino early yesterday was split in half in a horrifying accident on I-95 in The Bronx — leaving 14 passengers dead and a blood-soaked mess of severed body parts, crumpled metal and broken glass.
World Wide Tours driver Ophadell Williams claimed that a tractor-trailer clipped the bus while changing lanes at about 5:30 a.m. and fled the scene.
But police sources, saying there was no damage evidence on the bus of any collision, were questioning Williams’ account.
A truck driver traveling behind the bus told authorities it was moving erratically before it went off the road, but cops said Williams passed a Breathalyzer test, the sources said.
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The trucker’s vehicle was taken to State Police barracks on Long Island, where investigators were checking for signs of a collision. Preliminarily, no marks were found, the sources said.
Witnesses also said the bus was traveling at “a high rate of speed,” according to State Police Maj. Michael Kopy, but it was not clear whether it was exceeding the 55-mph speed limit.
The bus careened off a guardrail, was knocked on its side and skidded 300 feet into the stanchion of the Hutchinson River Parkway exit sign, cops said.
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The steel pole sliced through the bus at passenger-eye level, said FDNY Capt. James Ellson.
One victim was said to be decapitated in what was the largest single-incident loss of life in the city since an American Airlines jet crashed in Rockaway, Queens, in November 2001, killing 265.
“It was just a pile of humans — on the seats, on the floor, wrapped around the wreckage,” said Ellson, of Rescue Co. 3. “You would never want something like this wished upon your worst enemy.”
Some of the 31 passengers were thrown from the bus, which left the Uncasville, Conn., casino at 3:45 a.m.
About eight others were pinned between the stanchion and the roof.
A handful were able to climb out and walk away on their own.
“You have live victims — looking at you, breathing, screaming in agony — with victims that had passed away lying on top of them,” Ellson said.
“The victims [who] were still alive were in absolute agony. Some were trying to free themselves. Some were in absolute shock with what just happened.”
One man — impaled on a 2-inch piece of metal that had gone into his back — was trapped between the stanchion and the bus’ torn roof, said Ellson, a 20-year FDNY vet.
Above that passenger were two other victims — and the remains of a third.
“He was mumbling and screaming,” Ellson said. “It took a long time to remove the fella.”
Thirteen people died at the scene. Another died at Jacobi Hospital, where many of the 19 seriously injured passengers were taken.
Five survivors, including Williams, were transported to St. Barnabas Hospital, where at least two were on life support throughout the day.
Rescuers from the NYPD and FDNY who worked to free pinned passengers had to contend with live electricity and with gasoline leaking from the bus.
Firefighters divided into three teams to attack the destroyed bus from the front, the rear and the side and had to use a ladder to climb onto the gaping roof.
They also had to sort through live victims, remains of the dead, luggage and belongings — all thrown about as the bus slid some 100 yards down the highway.
It took rescuers more than an hour to save survivors and extricate the dead.
“The devastation and human toll is the most horrific I’ve seen,” said NYPD Capt. Matthew Galvin.
Firefighters worked together with police, using a “bucket line” method to remove victims from the carnage, he added.
“Everybody’s hands were working for the same goal,” he said. “We were digging our way from front to rear.”
The 10-inch-diameter stanchion ripped through the bus, leaving only the last two or three rows of seats untouched.
The driver, Williams, 40, also known as Eric, has been working for the company for six months.
Results from a blood test were pending, and investigators were checking video at the casino to see what Williams did while there, the sources said.
His wife, Holly, claimed he was clean — and said that this was his first accident in his 22 years of driving a bus and that he regularly works the Mohegan Sun run.
“He does that route every day,” she said. “He told me [that] a tractor-trailer cut him off, [that] the lip of the tractor-trailer hit him and tipped the bus [and] the bus swerved left.
“He was trying to hold it, but he couldn’t. He feels like it’s his fault. When I first saw him, I said, ‘Hi, my love.’ He didn’t say anything — he was just crying.”
The crash briefly trapped Williams under the bus, but he crawled out to rescue others, according to his distraught wife.
“He just kept going back and forth into the bus, pulling people off until he couldn’t do it anymore,” she said.
A neighbor described Williams as a “decent family man” and a “very responsible person.”
The company, which has a spotty safety record, declined to answer questions, saying only that it was working with investigators, including the National Transportation Safety Board, the State Police and the NYPD.
Many of the victims were of Chinese descent, and the Chinese consulate was working to alert relatives about the crash.
The passengers had paid a $15 fare and received vouchers for food and gambling.
Additional reporting by Douglas Montero, Jennifer Bain and Vinita Singla