SHELBY — No injuries were reported Tuesday afternoon to the driver of a car which crashed into the front entrance of Dollar Tree in Shelby.
Shelby fire Captain Randy Washburn said the department received a call to the scene at 1:50 p.m. Shelby firefighters remained at the scene for about two hours Tuesday afternoon.
The store was closed immediately following the incident, the captain said.
Washburn said about 90 percent of the vehicle made its way inside the building through the glass doors at the store’s front entrance. No Dollar Tree employees or shoppers in the store were injured during the incident, he said.
“(The driver) jumped the curb and went through the double entry doors,” Washburn said. “We had to cut the (store’s) doors free to get them off of the vehicle.”
After securing the area of the crash, firefighters shut off the power to the air blowers, positioned above the doors, for safety purposes while removing the vehicle.
“We made sure the patient was fine,” Washburn said. “(The patient) refused assessment and care (from firefighters/EMS), so it was not an EMS scene — more just stabilizing the building and the car, and helping the tow-truck company get the car back out of the building.”
Shelby’s Dollar Tree, located at 11 Mansfield Ave., opened this past spring after updates were made to the building formerly home to Rite Aid.
Washburn said Dollar Tree officials at the Shelby store have already been in contact with their own maintenance representatives in order to secure the building’s front entrance.
“They’re (Dollar Tree) going to be closed until that whole door/window system gets fixed because it’s literally just hanging by wires so to speak,” he said.
Shelby police officials were unavailable to speak with Richland Source before this story was published due to their response to a separate crash Tuesday afternoon.
