Car slip up puts dairy owner in a jam

An elderly lady drove through the doors of the store. Photo / Thinkstock

A dairy owner feared for her life as a car ploughed through the door of her shop and pinned her between shelves yesterday afternoon.

Taruna Patel was working at the Northcross Price Cutter when a car driven by an elderly woman crashed through the front doors.

"It was scary, very scary. I thought I was going to die," Mrs Patel said.

"As she drove in her car was pushing the shelving towards me. I was pinned between the bread stand near the counter and the shelves."

Mrs Patel said if the car had not stopped when it did, things could have been "very bad".

"If she had driven one more inch I would have been squashed."

Luckily, Mrs Patel was not seriously hurt.

"Apart from some small bruises, nothing happened to me ... I was trapped for a few minutes though."

She said the woman parked outside the East Coast Rd store in Browns Bay and appeared to stop before lurching forward through the door.

"Instead of braking, she accelerated. The door is very wide and she drove straight through it.

"The woman was very shaken. She stayed in the car for about half an hour and her doctor came to see her. She was very upset, she said she was sorry."

Mrs Patel did not speak to the woman after she was freed.

"I was too shocked and my whole shop was broken. The whole front door has lifted off the ground and everything was on the ground."

She said the shop had only just reopened after renovations. Her insurance company had arranged for builders to start work rebuilding the shelves late yesterday afternoon.

"When I saw the impact of what happened I thought it would take days to clean up. But the whole block, all our neighbours came and started putting our stock into boxes."

Police said they did not yet know if the driver would be charged.