The driver behind the wheel in a nightmarish bus crash that killed 15 passengers last year was found not guilty of manslaughter charges by a Bronx jury Friday, following a dramatic trial that lasted eight weeks.
The prosecution argued that Ophadell Williams was dangerously sleep-deprived before the World Wide Tours bus left the Mohegan Sun Casino in Connecticut and headed south on I-95 toward Chinatown.
But the jury acquitted the 41-year-old from Brooklyn of manslaughter and criminally negligent homicide in the deadly March 12, 2011 crash, the most serious of the 54 counts he was charged with last September.
Williams, who wiped his brow nervously with a Bible on the defense table in front him, was found guilty only of aggravated unlicensed operation of a vehicle, the least serious charge, and will pay a $500 fine after time served.
The bus veered off the highway, slammed into a guardrail and flipped onto its side at about 5:40 a.m. on March 12, 2011 near the Bronx and Westchester County border. Passengers screamed with fear as a metal signpost sliced through the vehicle, traumatized survivors testified.
The prosecution compared driving under a state of exhaustion to driving drunk. But Williams claimed he was forced to swerve because he was cut off by a tractor trailer and his lawyer objected to the argument that driving while tired is a crime.
“Many people function on four to five hours of sleep,” lawyer Patrick Bruno said Friday.
The driver’s wife wept with relief as the verdict was read, using a handkerchief to wipe her glistening eyes.
“I knew they would do the right thing,” Williams told Bruno after the decision was read, Bruno said.
But Florence Wong, the daughter of a passenger killed in the crash, left the courtroom Friday with a troubled frown.
“The jurors have spoken,” she said.
When asked whether she agreed with the verdict, Wong simply answered, “No.”
“But on the other hand, he felt he was being made a martyr, the fall guy for a terrible accident,” the lawyer said Friday.
In addition to the 15 passengers who were killed, 18 were injured, including a woman who now uses a wheelchair and a man who took the witness stand to describe how he lost both arms in the horrific crash.
Survivors and relatives of passengers killed in the crash are pursuing at least 25 civil lawsuits against Williams and World Wide Tours, Bruno said, noting that many witnesses had money riding on the outcome of the trial.
But Assistant District Attorney Gary Weil argued Williams was responsible for getting enough sleep. Weil cited cell phone and rental car records to prove the driver was awake during much of his time off, and witnesses said Williams was driving erratically before the crash.
The "black box" recovered from the bus showed Williams failed to hit the brakes in the seconds before the accident, suggesting he was nodding off, not swerving to avoid another vehicle.
Passengers who survived the wreck, and motorists on I-95 at the time of the accident, testified they saw Williams weaving between lanes and changing speeds - behavior Bruno attributed to construction zones and speed traps along the highway.
One witness said she thought the vehicle was a "party bus" and it reached 78 mph in a 50 mph zone before the crash, Weil said.
The National Transportation Safety Board investigated the accident and in June cited driver fatigue as the probable cause, finding Williams had little sleep in the three days prior to the crash, dozing from midnight to 3:20 a.m. on the day of the accident, while the passengers were gambling.
The NTSB also found Williams previously had his license suspended eight times for various violations, some under false aliases.
Many of the passengers were immigrants and senior citizens who bought round-trip tickets to gamble and attend a concert at Mohegan Sun.
Relatives of the dead were among 55 people who testified for the prosecution, but Bruno called no witnesses. He instead painted Williams as a victim among many victims, not a lawbreaker.
Photos and accounts of the gruesome crash scene led to the closure of World Wide Tours and a push to reform the discount bus industry, with the feds shutting down 26 bus lines in May 2012.
Indicted in September 2011, Williams was held on $250,000 bail throughout the trial. He faced a maximum sentence of up to 15 years in prison for manslaughter, up to 7 years for assault and up to four years for criminally negligent homicide.
Lawsuits for damages filed in several state Supreme Court jurisdictions have been consolidated into a single case file in Brooklyn and will share the same trial, said Steven North, lawyer for one of the crash survivors.
The damages available through the case against World Wide Tours and Williams won't total more than $5 million, the sum amount that the defunct bus company was insured for.
But North said he and other attorneys have filed lawsuits against the city Transportation Department, along with claims against the state Thruway Authority for highway defects that allegedly contributed to the severity of the crash.
The claims allege that the metal signpost may have been installed too close to the road and that it should have buckled under the weight of the bus, said North, who believes the allegations were substantiated by the NTSB investigation.
Lastly, victims of the accident are suing Mohegan Sun in the Mohegan Nation tribal court for not providing bus drivers adequate sleeping quarters, he said.
"The amount of insurance coverage maintained by the company is woefully inadequate to cover all of the injured plaintiffs," North said.
His client, a Chinese immigrant, suffered brain damage that impairs his ability to think clearly and leg fractures that make it difficult for him to walk.
"He suffers pains and recognizes that, in a way, he is not the same as he was before," said North.
Bruno said the civil lawsuits amount to roughly $3 billion in lawsuits but North said the claims don't include dollar amounts.
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