WOODINVILLE, Wash. — An SUV crashed through the wall of the Woodinville Café on Northeast Woodinville-Duvall Road on Sunday morning, Father’s Day, after the driver reportedly pressed the gas instead of the brake. Two people were taken to the hospital with minor injuries, while Eastside Fire & Rescue evaluated five others at the scene.
The café was packed for Father’s Day when the vehicle’s front end ended up inside the building. Customers narrowly avoided serious injury during the incident. The Woodinville Café is now temporarily shut down and boarded up, awaiting inspection by a structural engineer.
Will Brausieck, a customer at the Woodinville Café, was seated in a booth just inches from the impact. “We were literally right next to it… hit the booth right behind my brother… it nudged my brother’s chair so it was a foot away from hitting our booth,” Brausieck said. He noted that his eldest brother immediately ran to the car to check on the driver and tell them to turn the engine off.
“The rest of us all tried as best we could to get out of the booth and move to the back of the building just in case anything happened with the car… you never know in a car accident what’s leaking, what might catch fire,” Brausieck said. His family was not hurt in the crash.
Rebekah Crespo, a stylist at the salon next door to the Woodinville Café, felt the impact through the floor. “I felt it through the floor,” Crespo said. She added that her stylist, whose station was along the wall shared with the cafe, heard the impact and felt her mirror shake. Crespo also went to check on the elderly woman who was behind the wheel of the SUV. Witnesses reported the driver appeared to be in shock after the incident.
“She just looked like she was in shock,” Crespo said. Cafe management announced that a structural engineer will inspect the building on Monday. The owner of the Woodinville Café indicated that a similar crash occurred at their Sammamish café in April. No one was hurt in that previous incident.
Cafe management hopes to reopen within the next week at least partially or so, following the structural engineer’s assessment of the building.