SUV SLAMS INTO BAKERY

Glendale News Press
09/09/22/publicsafety/gnp-crash092309.txt
Sept 22 2009
CA

Clean up begins after a vehicle lost control and went into Movses
Golden Pastry at 1700 block of Glenoaks Blvd. in Glendale at about
8 am on Tuesday, September 22, 2009. (Raul Roa/News-Press)

By Zain Shauk Published: Last Updated Tuesday, September 22, 2009
3:28 PM PDT

NORTHWEST GLENDALE — When a woman drove her car through the front
of Movses Golden Pastry five years ago, owner Armen Nazarian thought
he could protect his store by installing steel barriers in front of
the property. He was wrong.

A Burbank woman in the parking lot of Nazarian’s Glenoaks Boulevard
strip mall early Tuesday mistakenly slammed on the gas pedal of
her white Toyota 4Runner and barreled through the corner bakery,
evading a steel barrier and smashing through a storefront window,
refrigerators, tables and chairs, police said.

The SUV skidded to a halt on the property after crashing through a
second window and nearly rumbling off an elevated outdoor seating
area facing Glenoaks Boulevard, police said.

"I didn’t really expect that this was going to happen again," said
Nazarian, who snapped digital photos of the store as firefighters
and police helped clear warped steel wreckage and shattered glass
from around the vehicle.

Assortments of pastries and Armenian breads sat amid shards of glass
in broken refrigerated displays that cost about $10,000 each. Displays
had fallen from shelves along the back wall of the shop, Nazarian said.

The 2004 crash had cost about $30,000 to repair, but Tuesday’s damages,
combined with lost profits from days that Nazarian will have to close
for repairs and health inspector visits will likely triple that total,
he said.

He expected insurance to pick up the tab.

Glendale and Burbank firefighters used a rotary saw to clear a railing,
allowing them to move the 4Runner off the elevated seating area and
onto a flat-bed tow truck. No one was hurt, although employees at the
1755 W. Glenoaks store said they feared for their lives upon hearing
the SUV plow through the front of the shop.

"I just heard a boom, the store started shaking and I just saw the
car is coming and I ran," said Lusine Petrosyan, a cashier who was
working behind the store counter and looking the other direction when
the crash occurred.

She darted to the store’s back room with other workers, she said.

The accident was not only avoidable, but could have been deadly,
Glendale Police Officer Larry Ballesteros said.

"If somebody would’ve been standing at the counter ordering a tray of
fruit tarts or something, he would’ve been killed," Ballesteros said.

No charges are so far pending against the driver, Heranosh Baghomian,
because the accident occurred on private property, he said.

Nazarian, who owns the strip mall, was concerned not only that a
similar incident had happened before, but that another property he
owns, at the intersection of Chevy Chase Drive and Verdugo Road,
has also been struck twice by out-of-control drivers, he said.

"I’m very confused," he said.

Similar accidents have happened in the last two years, with drivers
ramming through a Starbucks on Foothill Boulevard and a Supercuts on
Glendale Avenue, injuring bystanders in the process, Ballesteros said.

"It’s too common," he said.

Nazarian questioned whether enough Glendale drivers were safe enough
to be on the roads, echoing concerns frequently raised by residents
fed up with the city’s notoriously accident-ridden streets.

The Department of Motor Vehicles is consistently working to improve
driver’s license testing standards, said spokeswoman Jan Medoza,
who insisted that most of California’s 26 million motorists are safe.

"We’ve got millions of drivers out there," she said. "It’s a numbers
game for sure."