MUKILTEO, Wash. — A car barreled into a North Puget Sound business and burst into flames.
It happened in a tattoo shop in a strip mall on Mukilteo Speedway Tuesday afternoon.
The Mukilteo Fire Department had to pull the only person in the car, the injured female driver, from the driver’s seat.
Julia Abraham is usually standing right where the car landed. "The car drove right into my station,” she tells us.
Today-- for some reason-- she wasn't.
"We were just standing in the back room and we heard a loud boom that sounded like an earthquake, felt the energy and then we looked up and saw there was a car that had driven through our front window, and so we ran out back right away because it was smoky and we thought the car was going to explode,” the tattoo artist explains.
The smoke was so thick and the crash so loud that the Mukilteo fire chief tells us the original call came in as a commercial fire.
But the only fire was coming from the car, which miraculously, did less damage than it looks like.
"She missed any sort of supporting walls between the businesses so it doesn't appear there's any structural damage to the roof structure,” explains Chief Chris Alexander.
Fire officials don't know why the woman's car ended up in the shop; they say she wasn't parked but rather seems to have turned into the parking lot and plowed through the storefront without stopping.
Julia watched firefighters pull her out."I just saw here when they were taking her out of the car,” Julia says.
“She looked conscious but she looked like she was maybe hurt."
Police are investigating.
The identity of the driver has not been released and officers have not said if any charges will be filed.