At 10:18 AM on Thursday, April 8th, a 2014 Ford Explorer found its way into the front of our retail shop in Annapolis, MD. The out of control vehicle rammed the right set of windows, continuing into the shop and destroying the work station where Jessie and Jonathan both work everyday. While we don’t open each day until 11 AM, Jessie often gets to the shop early. On this day, she decided to swing by Michael’s craft store before coming to the shop. If she had come straight to the shop, she probably would have been sitting right there when the Explorer crashed through the front of the building.
As you can see below, the damage was confined to a relatively small area. However, the debris found their way several feet in all directions.
The Famous Leg Lamp what we leave constantly lit in our front window got dinged-up, but remained unbroken. In fact, that lamp made our story front page news in the April, 9th Capital Newspaper with the headline of Not fra-gee-lay! Replica of ‘A Christmas Story’ leg lamp survives crash into Annapolis cigar shop.
And, while the Leg Lamp mostly made it through the accident, we’re still not sure about much of the other items in the debris field because the insurance adjuster with Liberty Insurance apparently felt no motivation to answer our calls and emails as to what we need to do next. So, thanks to Liberty, damage from Thursday morning is going to sit right where it’s at until at least Monday — five days of business crushing delay. Meanwhile, we can’t access that area, dig out our computer equipment, sweep up the dangerous broken glass, access a whole showcase of cigar and pipe accessories, and manage a huge part of our business in the process. I guess Liberty doesn’t mind paying for days of unnecessary business interruption.
The driver was visiting our upstairs neighbor for some sort of physical therapy that was needed after suffering some sort of medical issue. After reading the police report, we found to that this is the SECOND TIME this driver has run into a building like this in the last 8-years. We also read that the driver admitted that both of these incidents were a result of impairment from ongoing medical conditions which kept her from being able to tell which pedal — brake or gas — she was pressing with her foot.
We’ll keep this post updated as new information comes to light…
