The Talon crash in which a blue Toyota Corolla collided with and shattered the Talon door last month was confirmed as an accident, albeit a bizarre one.
The vehicle’s driver, a woman, was attempting to move out of the parking space when she accidentally “stepped on the gas instead of the break,” said Justin Shelby, public information officer for Campus Safety. Shelby said delivery trucks tend to run into things fairly often, and cars sometimes hit the gate arms on the edges of campus. But, he could remember “nothing like this” in which a car actually hit a building during his time with Campus Safety. The driver wasn’t under the influence of anything, Shelby confirmed.
No students were injured in the incident, but the front end of the Corolla was crunched, and the Talon door was seriously disfigured. The empty space was boarded up, and Facilities Services has said it will have to call in outside workers to replace the door.
The Corolla had to pull up over the curb to hit the Talon door. Sophomore Kari MacLurg was facing the door just a few feet away when she saw the vehicle with the Texas license plate hurtling towards her.
“I saw it coming, and then I just like turned,” said MacLurg, who was mopping the floor at the time of the accident. “I was just like shocked.”
Laughingly, MacLurg said she would have to re-sweep the entire restaurant all over again. MacLurg suffered no injuries aside from a very minor glaze of glass against her shoulder.
Freshman Tiffany White was sitting facing the door of the Talon when the accident took place, hurling a piece of glass at her face. White was fine afterwards.
“I just heard screeching,” she said, recalling the accident.
Alumna Katrina Ford, who was sitting straight across from the Talon when the vehicle made impact and watched it happen, said it sounded almost like an explosion, with glass shattering “all over the place. It was that hard. It was pretty forceful, whatever it was,” she said.
Aside from the Talon door needing replacement, no significant damages to objects or people occurred.
