More than 40 people were injured during a rush-hour smash-up between a city bus and a car trying to speed away from cops in Brooklyn on Monday, authorities said.
Officials said 41 people on the B15 bus were hurt as their vehicle crashed into a black Camaro after the car ran a stop sign at Herkimer Street and Albany Avenue in Bedford-Stuyvesant.
Many of the injured were young teens heading home from their first day of school, witnesses said. Most if not all suffered minor injuries.
An elderly couple also was taken from the scene in neck braces and on stretchers.
“The bus was packed. Some kids were crying,” said Joette Bryant, 45, who lives down the street.
“The bus was already in the middle’’ of the intersection when the Chevy “just smashed right into him,” she said.
“He was doing at least 80 to 85’’ mph, Bryant said of the Camaro’s driver. “The police car was chasing him.
“The car spun, and the bus pushed him about 20 feet. Everyone on the bus, they were falling all over the place.’’
Witness Henry Woods, 74, said two plainclothes cops stepped out of the black, unmarked car that had been chasing the Camaro and whipped out their guns.
“They made the passenger leave the car, and they handcuffed him down on the ground. They said, ‘Don’t move! Don’t move!’ and they had a gun pointed at him,’’ Woods said.
“And they had a gun pointed at the driver, also, but he wasn’t moving. He wasn’t coherent.”
The roof of the mangled Camaro had to be cut off so that the driver could be extricated, witnesses said.
He was quickly handcuffed to his stretcher before being carted off to the hospital, they said.
He and his male passenger were among four people seriously hurt, officials said.
Authorities said the men had been stopped in their car at Dean Street and Bedford Avenue about eight blocks away after their Camaro clipped the cop car’s driver’s side window.
When the cops got out to talk to the men, they spotted a gun in the car, officials said.
The car then sped off before the cops could question them and crashed, authorities said.