NEWARK -- Sheldon Kest lost half the middle finger on his right hand in the Sept. 29 NJ Transit crash, so he's using a different gesture to let the agency know how he feels: a lawsuit.
Kest, a 66-year-old technology manager who lives in Tenafly, was on the Pascack Valley Line train when it crashed at Hoboken Terminal on Sept. 29, killing one person and injuring Kest and 107 others.
Graphic photographs displayed during a press conference Tuesday at the Hilton in Newark called by Kest's lawyers included one of him being led away from the train with blood running down his face, while another was a close-up of his finger stitched closed after being severed midway up.
The lawyers, Andrew Duffy and Tom Kline, filed a notice of tort claim against NJ Transit, a legal step required within 90 days of the incident and 6 months in advance of the actual suit's filing.
Duffy and Kline both said it was clear from the NTSB investigation that the accident was the result of human error on the part of the engineer, who was traveling too fast when the train entered the terminal. As his employer, NJ Transit is legally liable, they said.
National Transportation Safety Board investigators said the engineer told them he could not recall what happened in the moments leading up to the crash, only that he woke up on the floor of the cab afterward.
"It's clear that the train was going too fast," said Kline, adding that the engineer's lack of "situational awareness" by no means absolved NJ Transit of liability. "The agency is, of course, responsible for the negligence or the failure of its employees."
An NJ Transit spokeswoman declined to comment.
The lawyers and Kest, who was accompanied by his wife, Lynda, also criticized NJ Transit for having failed to install positive train control rail safety technology, an automatic breaking system that some experts said might have prevented the crash.
They acknowledged that Congress had granted NJ Transit and other rail agencies a extension to install the PTC safety technology and that the deadline is still two years away. But Kest and his the lawyers criticized transit officials for having failed to make positive control a budget priority.
Asked whether he supported recent gasoline tax hike approved by the legislature to help pay for overdue transportation infrastructure projects, Kest replied: "I think safety should come first and transit systems should deal actively with safety issues, not reactively."
Asked whether the loss of his finger would prevent or inhibit his work or hobby, Kest said his job as a technology manager with a firm in Jersey City demanded that he type on his computer most of the day.
He recalled being on his way to work that morning, having recently returned to work after a three-month absence following surgery in June for a knee injury he suffered in an accident in his garage.
He wasn't quite sure how he lost his finger or suffered the cuts on his face and head. He said he was sitting in an isle seat with his right hand in the empty middle seat next to him, when the train lurched violently, upon what he now assumes was its impact with the bumper at the end of Track 5.
He said the woman who had been sitting in the window seat to his right had somehow gotten out of the train through the window, and eventually he moved over to it and yelled out for help.
He said two EMTs helped him out of the train, then walked him to an ambulance, while the extent of his injuries still had not quite registered in his own mind.
"I believe I was more in shock," he said. "I realized something was definitley wrong with my finger, and I knew that the top of my head was bleeding. And I noticed as we were walking to the ambulance that my shirt was bloody. So I knew that something serious had happened, but I didn't quite feel anything until I was at thehospital and things started settling in."
Lynda Kest recalls being at a hospital herself that morning to have some routine tests done, when she learned of the accident and her husband's condition from a phone message left by her son.
"Thank god he's alive," she recalled thinking, before heading to Jersey City Medical Center, where her husband was taken for treatment. "He had blood and cuts all around his eyes. And all I could think of was how lucky he was his eye was still there."
Steve Strunsky may be reached at sstrunsky@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @SteveStrunsky. Find NJ.com on Facebook.