ANGRY friends and relatives of a man, who was burnt to death after the car he was driving collided with a bus, forced the bus driver to pick the man’s bones out of the wrecked car in Futian District early Wednesday morning.

The enraged mob, which held the bus driver responsible for death of the car driver, surnamed Li, surrounded the police car in which the bus driver was sitting for a few hours, ordering him to pick the deceased’s bones out of the vehicle.

The standoff lasted a few hours, Thursday’s Southern Metropolis Daily reported.

After the bus driver, who was not named by the report, obeyed the mob’s order, the police took him away for questioning.

The bus collided with Li’s Xiali car at about 11 p.m. Tuesday after running a red light on Shazui Road, said a witness surnamed Zhang. “The bus was driving at a speed limit exceeding 80 kilometers per hour when it ran the red light,” Zhang said.

Earlier media reports blamed Li for the traffic accident, saying Li was driving on the dividing line on Furong Road when his car collided with the bus which was turning into Furong Road from Shazui Road. “This is not what really happened,” Zhang said.

The collision resulted first in a fire and then an explosion.

Witnesses said the fire started 10 minutes after the collision. “The bus driver could have saved Li,” said another witness who was not identified. “But he just stayed there and watched the car driver burn to death.”

Another man surnamed Zhang whose car was directly behind the bus confirmed the vehicles caught fire about 15 minutes after the collision.

(Eunice Kang)