Man crashes SUV into Cove storefront
Posted On: Friday, Jan. 22 2010 05:16 AM
By Taylor Short
Killeen Daily HeraldCOPPERAS COVE – A sport utility vehicle driven by an 85-year-old man careened through an empty storefront in Copperas Cove Thursday before veering left through the side wall of an adjacent store.
The silver, late-model GMC SUV smashed through the glass and brick of a vacant storefront between the Goryeo Oriental Food Store and Giovanni's Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria in the Cove Terrace shopping strip about 12:40 p.m., Copperas Cove police Officer Lt. Daniel Austin said.
Deputy Fire Chief Gary Young said he did not know the cause of the accident. Paramedics at the scene assessed the two occupants of the vehicle. They were not hospitalized and did not report any injuries, Young said.
The vehicle was removed from the scene, and fire and emergency responders left around 1:40 p.m. The names of the driver and passenger were not available.
The vehicle smashed about three-quarters of the way through the right wall near the front of the food store, creating a large hole and sending a few refrigeration units and their contents onto the tile floors, where shards of glass mixed with puddles of various Asian specialties.
"We were just in the kitchen and we heard all the knocking. We looked out and there he was," said In Sumner, a food store employee who began working at the store Thursday and is now worried about her job.
Sumner said fire officials arrived within a few minutes and that a customer had just left the food store before the accident.
Not pressing charges
Owner Chomhey Sell said no one was near the area where the vehicle collided and no one in the store was injured.
Sell said the driver and passenger of the vehicle were older people and the store doesn't plan to press charges. The women said they wouldn't know how much damage was caused until everything was cleaned.
Maura Martinez, owner of Giovanni's Italian Restaurant & Pizzeria located one door to the right of the empty storefront, said no one in the restaurant saw the accident, but employees and customers heard it.
Martinez said some of her customers went outside and came back inside to tell employees to call 911. There was no damage to the left wall of the restaurant.
"The good thing is nobody getting hurt," she said. "Some of the customers were saying that I've got my new drive-through now."
Contact Taylor Short at
tshort@kdhnews.com or (254) 501-7476. Follow him on Twitter at KDHcove.