Holy crap! I just saw a car plow into a baby store!

As we were pulling in to the shopping center parking lot, a taupe-colored car, a sedan I think, just... plunged would the the appropriate word I think, front-end first into the Once Upon A Child baby goods store on W. New Haven Avenue. The driver - an older lady who was very surprised and immediately jumped out to ask if everyone was all right - claimed she was trying to park at the time. The car bounded right over the curb and plowed through the glass-and-cinder block storefront, shattering tinted shards of window glass everywhere. I heard the deep, dry crunch-thunk of the crash and the high-pitched shatter of the windows from halfway across the parking lot, through a closed car window no less. Its airbag also never managed to deploy, which everyone there agreed was a bit of a surprise (I had to wonder if it had not been properly installed or something; you sometimes hear about that kind of thing with used cars, for instance, and considering it looked as if the brakes hadn't even been used...). Incredibly enough, no one, including the driver, was injured despite the store being open at the time.

The owner had the presence of mind enough to call 911 immediately, as did at least one other person at the scene, so police arrived quickly, and the store was evacuated just in case, on account of it was missing a huge chunk of the front now. Some of the ceiling tiles are even screwed up; the metal that holds the windows up and against each other crumpled like tin foil, taking part of the ceiling with it, I think. You can right now still see the insulation from the ceiling poking out in places. The glass is in about a million and one pieces, and it's scattered in little piles all over the sidewalk and everything. Weirdly enough, both front doors seem fine, though. They're just now towing the car out of the store front. I'll probably go and talk to them, see how they're doing.


Sorry, I don't have pictures - I don't have a camera with me. It was pretty impressive, though. Hope insurance covers the repairs...

UPDATE, 11 AM-11:15 AM: One of the other-store owners in the same shopping center at the scene said they'd post it on YouTube, so I'll probably be able to link it at some point. The front of the store is just... havoc, right now. Said other-store owner said Once Upon A Child probably won't be able to open that location for another month, with that kind of damage. Bizarrely, it turns out the car may not have even been going fast enough to trigger the airbags. Which is kind of dumbfounding, given how easily it plowed through cinder-blocks.

I watched as they loaded the car slowly onto the tow truck, with the musical tinkle of falling glass accompanying every jerk of the the chain (in one of those odd cases of your brain making weird and totally inappropriate connections, my immediate thought was "wind-chimes!"). The car itself, turns out, has only one busted mirror and some scratches. Kind of hard to believe, but there ya go.

If I can find that other lady's YouTube posting, I'll link it soon as I find it, all right?


-Jamie