By RYAN HENRY and LAURA B. MARTINEZ | Staff Writers
Two men are in police custody after an SUV rammed into a restaurant Saturday, sending a cashier to the hospital with injuries, according to Brownsville police.
Those who experienced the ordeal from inside the Toddle Inn’s dining area consider themselves fortunate no one was killed.
“Hell yeah, we’re lucky,” restaurant manager Melina Robles told The Brownsville Herald. “We could have been standing there waiting on a table with customers sitting down or someone walking in or walking out.”
In fact, some customers had just left and another eight were eating breakfast. Then, just a few minutes before 8 a.m., a silver Chevrolet Tahoe thundered through the front door.
Robles, who was standing at the kitchen pass-through window with her back to the dining area, heard the roar of the crash.
“It was a super loud sound, like when a transformer goes out — but like a 100 times stronger than that,” she said. “I thought it was a transformer because the lights flickered, but as soon as I turned around, I saw the vehicle in the entrance.”
The cashier was screaming “at the top of her lungs” in pain, Robles said.
Through the screaming and the dust and debris in the air, there was still another danger for the customers — the smell of natural gas.
“I smelled the gas, but it was a different smell. It was a weird smell,” Robles said. “I started screaming to everyone to get out.”
Restaurant owner Mark Perez said the SUV crashed through the building’s gas meter, causing a gas leak, when the truck rammed through the entrance. He said the two men inside the truck fled on foot, as the engine idled.
“My concern was it (the truck) was going to blow,” Robles said.
But when the vehicle hit the dining room, all the tables and chairs were scattered, blocking a table of four diners into the corner. An older customer named Juan — known respectfully by the restaurant staff as Don Juan — had already helped carry the cashier outside and then returned to help the manager get those four diners to safety, each moving tables and chairs.
With gas leaking into the restaurant, the engine could not be immediately turned off.
“They hit the gas pipe, they took out the whole meter,” Perez said. “The vehicle was still on, and they couldn’t turn the vehicle off.”
Firefighters later had to open the hood of the truck “and disconnect a bunch of relays because the vehicle, where the key ignition was, was broken,” Perez said.
“How it didn’t blow was a miracle,” he said.
Brownsville police are investigating the accident, department spokesman Investigator Martin Sandoval said. The driver and passenger — both men — fled on foot from the accident but were arrested soon after by police officers, Sandoval said.
“I’d say in about 20 minutes our patrol division located these two individuals and took them into custody,” Sandoval said. “Luckily, people saw them and gave a good description of the two individuals, and we managed to locate them later.”
According to the spokesman, police suspect the driver lost control of the vehicle but that alcohol was not a contributing factor.
Brownsville Fire Chief Jarrett Sheldon said his firefighters had to take control of the gas leak.
The injured cashier was taken to the hospital with non-life threatening injuries, and has since been released, according to restaurant owners and staff.
One of the four diners blocked by tables and chairs into the corner of the restaurant was Sharon Putegnat, a Brownsville resident who uses a cane to assist her as she walks. She was eating breakfast with her sister and brother-in-law, Pam and Gale Armstrong, and her good friend Karen Ray when they heard what she said was an “unbelievable sound.”
“My sister screams ‘a bomb,’” Putegnant said. “Really, I have never heard what a bomb sounds like basically, but it was deafening. This vehicle came in, we didn’t even know it was a vehicle at the time, because we had to turn away because the debris started flying. I mean tables, chairs, wall. I mean, it was just coming down.”
Putegnat said everyone was fortunate that the restaurant was not more crowded — and that those who were eating were not sitting closer to the front door.
“If we would have been sitting at the place where it came in, we would have been killed,” she said.
The manager and Juan helped Putegnant and others get outside through the kitchen.
“I remember Melly (the manager) saying, ‘Get in your cars and get out of here as fast as you can because the car is on a gas line’,” Putegnat said.
The Toddle Inn, located at 1740 Central Blvd., first opened its doors in 1961. The Perez family has owned the Brownsville landmark since 1971, and Mark Perez took ownership of it in January 2005.
Perez was at home when he got the call about the accident. He immediately got dressed and arrived to meet with staff and survey the damage.
“Our regular customers,” Perez said, referring to Putegnant and her party, “they left the money (for breakfast) on the table. They still paid.”
View Brownsville Herald photojournalist Miguel Roberts’s full photo gallery of the Toddle Inn restaurant after the accident:
Photo Gallery: SUV rips into Brownsville eatery during breakfast rush
