Four injured after car crashes into Chesterfield shopping center building

CHESTERFIELD, Va. (WWBT) - Four people were injured after a car crashed into Visionworks at a shopping center in Chesterfield County on Monday.

The crash happened on Stone Village Way at the Stonehenge Village Shopping Center along Midlothian Turnpike.

An employee, two children who were in the waiting room of the store, and the driver all had to be rushed to the hospital. Authorities say they’re expected to survive their injuries.

“How did that even happen?” a passerby said looking at the devastation. “Looks like a car ran into a store."

It was a sight to be seen Monday just before 4 p.m. after a tan Hyundai crashed right into a busy eyeglass store.

“I’m pretty shaken up right now, and it’s pretty terrifying and scary because I actually saw it happen,” Dr. Raquel Moncrieffe said. This is where Moncrieffe does business.

“My heart is still racing and I can’t breathe properly,” Moncrieffe said.

That’s because she watched one of her assistants being rushed to the hospital, along with two young patients. Witnesses say a woman - possibly in her late 60s - was behind the wheel.

“You could see the car just accelerating, and you just knew it wasn’t going to stop,” employee, Natalie Benn said.

“She hit the pole. She hit the brake. Then she reversed and thought it was done, but then she just plunged straight through,” Moncrieffe said.

That’s when David Swaby showed up at the right place at the right time.

“All I could hear is ‘my baby, my baby’ and I saw the car,” Swaby said. He rushed to the car that had people pinned underneath it and against the wall. “I just jumped in. Tried to get the door. She was screaming ‘my baby, my baby, my baby.’ When I jumped underneath the car, a little girl was underneath the passenger side tire, stretched across the driver’s side. I just got her out.”

“One of the gentlemen had to ask her to open the door so he could get in and turn the car off because you could tell it was still on. It could’ve blown up,” Moncrieffe said.

A bizarre series of events no one saw coming.

“Disbelief. It was getting close to the end of the day and thought it’s such a beautiful day outside, thought everything was going great and here we are right now,” Moncrieffe continued.

NBC 12 is awaiting word from authorities on how those three patients are doing and what led the driver to crash inside the store.

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