An elderly Manhattan man broke into loud sobs yesterday as a jury heard the harrowing tale of his encounter with a power-saw-wielding madman on a subway platform in 2006.
“I almost died,” Michael Steinberg, 70, told The Post outside Manhattan Supreme Court on the first day of trial in his suit against an MTA contractor.
Steinberg holds Five Star Electric Corp. responsible for its negligence in not locking down the tools and for not coming to his aid during the butchery.
The retired postal worker is still haunted by the face of Tareyton Williams, who sliced him with two 8-pound saws on the platform at 110th Street and Broadway.
Steinberg has forgiven his attacker, who apologized to him before he was sentenced to 18 years in prison. But he has to pop two Valium pills before entering the subway now.
His lawyer, Ronald Landau, told the jury, “There was nobody and nothing to prevent anybody — crazy person, sane person, thief, nonthief — from walking over to those power tools and just lifting them off.”
The contractor’s attorney, Barbara Sheehan, called the attack “an unexpected, unforeseeable action.”