Driver plows into Barnes & Noble
By KATIE PESZNECKER
Anchorage Daily News
Published: November 13, 2005
Last Modified: November 13, 2005 at 09:53 PM
A woman accidentally drove a station wagon through a wall of the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Midtown Anchorage on Sunday afternoon, sending glass, wood and books flying, and causing shrieking shoppers to run for safety.
No was one was hurt badly - an amazing fact, witnesses agreed. Two people were taken to the hospital, according to the Fire Department.
The store was filled with Sunday-afternoon browsers when the Subaru Outback came plowing through picture windows in the reading area, in the store's northwest corner. The car took out the Travel section and barreled some 40 feet through the bookstore before coming to rest in nonfiction.
"I thought it was an earthquake," said shopper Chris Badgett, 27. "There was screaming, people were running. I was running, too."
The driver has not been charged and police had not released her name Sunday night.
It happened around 2 p.m., a peak weekend time inside the sprawling bookstore.
Just before the Subaru hit, Geoff Brosamer was sitting in the reading area - a cozy space with cushy armchairs, reading tables, framed portraits of famous authors, and a faux fire flickering in the hearth.
He wandered over to the checkout counter and asked staff members to announce that his creative writing group would be meeting momentarily in the lounge. He said he walked back to the lounge, looked out the window, and saw the Subaru approaching.
"I saw this car turning, like it was going to go into the parking space," Brosamer said. "And then she just kept going and going."
The Subaru burst into the room - right where Brosamer had been sitting a few minutes earlier. The sound of shattering glass was deafening, witnesses said. People screamed and shrieked and dodged the car as it headed toward the fireplace, jerked right, obliterated shelves of travel books, and smashed into the stacks of the history section.
Shoppers instantly sprung into Good Samaritan mode, said Terise n'ha Caitriona, the store's cafe manager. A retired police officer helped get the woman out of the car. Doctors and nurses who were previously skimming titles and sipping coffee rushed to tend to victims.
There was even a veterinarian on hand who promptly saw to the woman's two large dogs, barking up a storm in the back of the car. The vet took the pups to her animal clinic for safekeeping, n'ha Caitriona said.
"It's Anchorage, and people are like that," she said. "Everyone who could help, helped. People who couldn't got out of the way."
Witnesses said the driver looked to be in her 50s. She told people she'd just taken her dogs for a run and decided to stop by Barnes & Noble on her way home. She seemed to be in shock, several bystanders said.
"She couldn't say if the car malfunctioned, or if she hit the wrong pedal," n'ha Caitriona added.
Police, medics and the fire department were on scene within minutes with multiple fire trucks, rescue vehicles and cop cars. The store's lot looked like the scene of a massive crime.
Sgt. Jeff Morton with the police department dubbed it a "multi-casualty response," since initial reports were someone might be trapped under the car, or maybe got hit hard by the Subaru.
The driver was uninjured, said Tom Kempton, fire department spokesman. Three people were treated for minor injuries, two of them were hospitalized, he said.
The store never closed.
Police swiftly cordoned off the reading area with yellow tape as astonished shoppers crowded up to get a look. Some dumbfounded adults muttered expletives. Children took in the scene with saucer-round eyes.
The crash unleashed literary upheaval - the sort of disorganization that would surely horrify any type-A minded librarian. Books on Mexico and Venice intermixed with volumes on Vietnam and George Washington. Alaska Mileposts mingled with tomes about Spartans and Ancient Rome. Thick texts on the FBI were shuffled among massive Atlases.
Glass sparkled against the carpet. Bulky volumes half-buried bookshelves splintered like dry kindling.
The car didn't look so hot either. Cracks spider-webbed across the windshield. The driver's side mirror? Gone. Long scrapes marred the passenger side, where a deep dent punctuated the panel just above the tire. Books and chunks of glass and the remains of furniture hid the Subaru's hood.
Police and fire crews cleared debris away, while others yanked remaining glass from the Subaru's entry point at the windowed wall. It left a gaping void an estimated 10 feet tall and 12 feet across.
Cops and firefighters pushed the car back through that hole and to the parking lot, where a tow truck would later take it for the police's investigation.
"Right now, all I can say is the vehicle entered from the parking lot," Morton said. "We're taking everything into account at this point. But this wasn't planned and we're investigating it as an accident, not as a criminal act."
The driver was "truly having a bad day," horrified at the idea she might have hurt anyone and badly shaken by how much worse it might have turned out, Morton said.
N'ha Caitriona said she tried to console the woman after the accident. "I told her, 'Look at it this way, they're travel books that aren't selling anyway because it's not tourist season.' "
At least one customer was bummed by the loss.
"Oh my God," 21-year-old Amanda Chriest said, as she crept toward the yellow tape. "I was going to get books for my trip to Germany - and the travel section is gone!"
Elsewhere in the store, it was business as usual. In fact, n'ha Caitriona said, business was slightly up for the day.
"We're actually quite lucky," she said. "Really, it could have been so much worse."
Daily News reporter Katie Pesznecker can be reached at
kpesznecker@adn.com.
I'm going to bring in my camera tomorow as well, though not sure how much will be cleaned up already.
