SAN DIEGO — Seven people were injured, including a 3-year-old child, after a car plowed into a restaurant in Lincoln Park during the lunch hour Tuesday, San Diego police and fire officials said.
A Ford Mustang and a Honda collided at 47th Street and Logan Avenue, sending the Honda into the Fresheria juice bar shortly after noon, Officer Scott Lockwood said.
Lockwood said the driver of the Mustang ran off, but officers detained her and later arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence and hit and run.
Officials said a total of seven people were taken to hospitals, according to a San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokeswoman. Lockwood said the injured including two people in the Honda and two people inside the shop.
Cashier Emely Gomez said she was ringing up a smoothie sale with a customer at the register when the car came bursting through the glass and slammed the customer into a wood counter. The crash pushed Gomez about a foot or so as well.
Gomez, 24, said she started crying and begging for help when she saw the badly injured customer trapped between the car and the counter.
“I started saying ‘Oh my God, there is a person (trapped).’ I think nobody saw that she was there. Only me. They thought only the car was there,” Gomez said.
More than an hour after the crash, a still shaken Gomez said that the second before the crash, she took three steps from the customer to get a napkin when she suddenly saw the car plow through the window and heard the explosion of glass.
“The way the car hit — that was for me,” Gomez said of the near miss. “I would have been dead.”
She said the car took out the register, the wood counter, “everything.”
Gomez said other customers were in the shop as well.
Police closed off the intersection as they investigated. As of 2 p.m., the crumpled Mustang remained on the street near the shop, and the Honda was still inside the building.
Staff photographer Jarrod Valliere contributed to this report.
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