ANDOVER, MASS. (WHDH) – The driver of an SUV struck two parked cars before slamming into a popular chain restaurant in North Andover late Thursday morning.
Betty Pease, 78, was behind the wheel and said she was pulling the car out of a parking spot and toward a nearby hardware store when simply lost control of her Cadillac Escalade.
“I tried to put the brake on, and the car just sped off,” she said.
Emergency crews responding to a reported crash in a parking lot off Peters Street found one of the vehicles involved partially inside a building that houses Panera Bread.
Surveillance video captured the moment the Escalade barreled through a glass storefront before coming to rest against a wall near the entrance around 11 a.m.
“I was thinking I can’t stop this car, I held on, and kept going, I am going to get hurt, I don’t want to hurt anyone else of course,” Pease said.
Massachusetts State Senator Diana DiZoglio says she looked on in horror as the out-of-control SUV crashed into the eatery.
“I was not calm at the time. I was chasing after the vehicle as it drove into the building,” she recalled. “I was very, very nervous that somebody was going to be behind those glass windows.”
One customer and five employees were in the building at the time of the crash but no one was hurt, officials said.
Pease was transported to an area hospital with a broken rib but said she is thankful she was the only one injured.
The SUV has since been towed away.
Town building inspector Paul Hutchins said that it’s “unbelievable” no one was injured.
“If someone was at that counter, they wouldn’t have made it,” he said.
It’s not yet clear when the restaurant will reopen.
The crash remains under investigation.
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