MINNEAPOLIS — A man who spent 2½ years in prison for a deadly 2006 car accident involving his Toyota before he was released amid reports of a sudden acceleration problem affecting the automaker’s cars told jurors Thursday in his lawsuit against Toyota that he is still haunted by the accident.

With his voice shaking, Koua Fong Lee testified that his heart races, his hands get cold and his body shakes whenever he thinks about the accident, in which his 1996 Camry slammed into the back of a family’s Oldsmobile at high speed, killing two people instantly, paralyzing a young girl who died 16 months later and permanently injuring two other people.

Lee, the leadoff witness in the lawsuit, has always maintained that his car accelerated on its own as he was exiting Interstate 94. He is among several plaintiffs seeking damages from Toyota Motor Corp. over the crash. He told jurors he feels “scared that if I think about this one day maybe I might die because of all these memories that I have to have here for the rest of my life.”

Lee’s attorney, Robert Hilliard, said during his opening statement that the crash was caused by a design defect involving a plastic pulley in the Camry’s mechanical accelerator control system that the Japanese automaker failed to identify. He said that flaw prevented Lee from stopping.

Toyota attorney Bard Borkon said the brakes and throttle system were working properly and that Lee’s car had gone 177,000 miles without any serious problems. He said experts will testify that there was no way the car could have accelerated to 75 mph if Lee had been pumping the brakes as he claimed, even with the throttle wide open.