A Subaru station wagon that crashed through the front doors of the East Hampton Market on Race Lane on Friday afternoon was being driven by a 91-year-old man, police said.
Several people were taken by ambulance to Stony Brook Southampton Hospital with minor injuries. No one was seriously hurt.
Chief Gerry Turza of the East Hampton Fire Department said the Subaru, driven by Julius Briller of the Bronx, had come to rest about 25 feet inside the store. It struck a portion of a checkout counter and a refrigerated display case, knocking the case a few feet from its base and damaging refrigeration lines.
Two engines, a heavy-rescue truck, and a tower truck responded. Fire police were called in to assist village police with traffic control in the area.
"Actually like two minutes before, I was right at the spot where the car hit and then I moved to the produce area and I was fixing stuff and cleaning, and all of a sudden I heard a big noise like the roof was falling in," said the owner of the market, Klever Lopez.
Olivia Brooks of East Hampton, who said she was in the store for the first time, was in line to pay, talking to a friend ahead of her, when she heard banging and saw glass flying. "A car was coming right at me and another man in the aisle," she said. She moved quickly out of the car's path ""as quickly as a 69-year-old woman can," she said " but sustained leg bruises and minor bleeding.
The man near her ended up in a sitting position with his legs out in front of him. Ms. Brooks said she went to help him, then called out to her friend, who came from the back of the store to help her. "Someone yelled, "Everyone out," and they were helped out to the ambulance.
Mr. Lopez said later that the man who wound up on the floor was actually hit by the car, “but thank God, his reaction was really fast. He started running, and he kind of jumped and the car just pushed him six or eight feet forward." That man, Raul Antonio Angeles of Three Mile Harbor Road, East Hampton, was treated for rib pain on his left side.
Over the weekend, Mr. Lopez said, police told him that the elderly driver had hit the gas instead of the brake. "We checked the cameras, and that's what happened. He was trying to park, he was almost at a stop in front of the building and he pressed the gas, so he just flew inside."
Mr. Briller, the driver, and his passenger, Sara Briller, sat outside the building for a time after the accident. "They were stunned," Ms. Brooks said. “I hope they're okay, I really do. They were sitting there so stoically." The couple were not taken to the hospital.
"I felt so very badly for the manager of that store," she added. "It was so well stocked and beautifully laid out. If it hadn't been for the space of that gigantic inner aisle, I think there would have been a more serious accident."
The market has been closed since. "I had to put plywood on the doors, and then we contacted the insurance company, and now we're waiting to hear from them to give us the okay to start cleaning the store and start emptying everything out," Mr. Lopez said on Tuesday.
