BIONIC boy Evan Reynolds sips water from a bottle held in his new prosthetic hand.
Evan, 19, has been fitted with the £10,000 bionic i-Limb a fully functional prosthetic arm which he can control just by thinking.

Sports fan Evan, who lost his left hand in a car accident two years ago, has become only the second Brit to be fitted with the incredible i-limb.

The battery-operated hand developed by Scottish-based Touch Bionics is controlled by the muscles in the remaining part of the arm.

Boffins attached electrodes on the skin surface which pick up muscle signals to open and close the life-like fingers.

The teenager, from Haslemere in Surrey, was devastated when his left hand was ripped off on a summers evening in 2006 as his friend was driving him home from a day out destroying his dreams of joining the British Army.


Devastated

He was sitting in the passenger seat with his hand resting on the wound-down window ledge when the car scraped a wooden post at the exit to the car park.

Evans hand was taken off instantly.

It was very nasty. It was amputated in a second, he said.

I always wanted to join the Army, that was what I wanted to do with my life, I dreamed of going to Sandhurst.

"Obviously I couldnt join the Army any more, I was devastated.

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It was Mr Reynolds older brother Richard who first saw a TV report about the i-Limb and contacted Touch Bionics.

The firm was still working on a prototype at the time, but after a number of tests and meetings with prosthetic experts, in February 2008 Mr Reynolds became the second person in Britain to have the i-Limb fitted.

"The most amazing thing about it was how quickly I adapted to it, said Evan.

I put it on and within minutes I was using it as well as I can today.

People always ask how its changed my life, but theres no specific thing.