A 68-YEAR-OLD HARPSWELL WOMAN was taken to a hospital after her vehicle drove into the dividing wall between the Little Tokyo and Gelato Fiasco restaurants on Maine Street Wednesday afternoon. Both restaurants, located at 72 and 74 Maine St., remained open.
A 68-year-old Harpswell woman was taken to a hospital after her vehicle drove into the dividing wall between the Little Tokyo and Gelato Fiasco restaurants on Maine Street Wednesday afternoon.
Patricia Anderson was taken to Maine Medical Center in Portland by Brunswick Rescue. She was listed in fair condition as of press time today.
Brunswick Police Captain Mark Waltz said at 12:59 p.m., police received a call that a vehicle had run into the dividing window between Little Tokyo and Gelato Fiasco restaurants. According to witnesses on scene, it appears the driver was pulling into a parking space in the 2006 Subaru Forester and then accelerated for some reason instead of stopping.
No one else was hurt other than the driver, who Deputy Fire Chief Donald Koslosky said was transported with a head and possible hip injury.
Firefighters said on scene that it appears that because the vehicle struck a dividing wall, which stopped it from traveling further into either restaurant, the damage is mainly cosmetic.
Brunswick Deputy Fire Chief Jeff Emerson was called to check the condition of the structure and determine if the building needed to be evacuated. After inspecting the damage, “there’s no immediate danger,” Emerson said because the woman hit a solid divider wall, which will need repair. If she’d gone to one side or another, it may have been a different story.
It’s a good example why the fire code does what it does and sometimes requires two exits, should something like this happens, Emerson said.
Brett Korpi, an assistant manager at Gelato Fiasco, heard the bang and saw his co-worker running outside after the car struck the corner of their restaurant.
There were two or three customers in Gelato Fiasco at the time he said, and the all ran out. He called 911 and then the owners, and when he came out the driver looked hurt and many people were already helping her. The fire department came and they went downstairs in the building as well to make sure nothing was seriously wrong.
“You always hear stories like this but you never expect them to happen to you,” Korpi said, standing out on the sidewalk facing the front of the buildings where the vehicle struck. “We kind of lucked out on the part of the building where it hit, because if it went a little that way or a little that way or that way, the car would have gone right through either or our store fronts and probably would have stopped. But it hit the center point.”
In back of the store at the time the crash happened Korpi remembers he thought something had fallen out front, but “I didn’t expect it to be a car in the window.”
Little Toyko restaurant owner Cuong Ly said normally, on Wednesdays, the areas where the vehicle struck is where they normally seat people. If the car had gone further to the right, he doesn’t know how far it would have driven into his restaurant before something stopped it, and there may have been injuries. For some reason they had many fewer patrons than usual at that time of day seated elsewhere.
He heard a loud noise and then saw items flying from the window where the Subaru hit. He ran out and didn’t see the driver, who had been pushed down into the passenger seat and the air bag had deployed.
It shook the whole ground, Ly said, and “I thought it was a bomb.”
Firefighters and a contractor remained on scene following the crash to access the damage and board up the windows. Both restaurants, located at 72 and 74 Maine St., remained open.
No charges are pending, Waltz said.
dmoore@timesrecord.com
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