Even without hands to gesture, Ren Xiang Yao gave a detailed demonstration yesterday of how he lost his arms last year in a Bronx bus crash.
Yao, 63, said the collision changed his life forever.
The retired forklift operator said he was trying to catch a nap on the Chinatown-bound bus when it veered off the road, flipped over and crashed into a signpost on Interstate 95.
The March 12, 2011, collision killed 15 people on their way home from a gambling trip to the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut.
“I could hear the metal and the tires crunching together,” Yao told a Bronx jury at the trial of the driver.
“It was very fast. After that I felt like everything was coming over me, and the person sitting next to me disappeared. I couldn’t make any sound. I felt something coming toward me, and I raised my arms.”
What Yao felt was a signpost that sliced the roof off the toppled bus and sheared off his arms.
Driver Ophadell Williams is charged with manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide. Prosecutors said Williams failed to get enough sleep before taking the wheel.