Car crashes through store

Marisa O’Neil

An accident Monday afternoon sent a car crashing through a shop

window on Harbor Boulevard, leaving the driver critically injured.

Newport Beach resident Earl Ike, 76, was taken to UC Irvine

Medical Center in Orange after his white sedan plowed into Mar Vac

Electronics at 2001 Harbor Blvd., police said. The car smashed

through display cases, toppling racks and coming to a rest some 20

feet inside the store.

None of the 10 or so customers in the store at the time were

injured, assistant manager Saul Carrillo said.

Customer George Margolin was in the center of the store when the

car crashed through the window, sending the shelves falling to the

floor.

“All of a sudden: Bang, bang, bang, bang,” Margolin said of the

accident. “All the shelving started falling toward us and I said:

‘What’s that?’ It took about eight or 10 seconds for it to end, and I

realized it was a car.”

The crash happened just after 4 p.m., when Ike, tried to make a

U-turn on Harbor Boulevard across three lanes of traffic, Costa Mesa

Police Sgt. Scott May said. A woman driving a small station wagon

broadsided the white car, sending it skidding across southbound

lanes, he said.

It then jumped a curb and flew inside the store.

“That poor lady,” said Robert Wallace, who was driving south on

Harbor Boulevard at the time of the crash. “He probably pulled out,

and she didn’t have enough time to stop.”

The woman in the station wagon was taken to Hoag Hospital. She

suffered a broken leg and cuts and scrapes, May said.

Police have not identified the woman driving the station wagon.

Store owner Vince Vaccher was in the parking lot at the time of

the accident but rushed inside to check on the driver, he said.

“I tried to get him to respond,” he said. “[Paramedics] took him

out and administered CPR and got him back.”

Despite the crash, people in the store remained relatively calm,

Carrillo said. The car’s tires left skid marks on the store’s tile

floor, he said.

“It’s amazing it stopped,” Vaccher said of the car.