It was a hair-raising experience for patrons of a Cochrane salon Saturday afternoon when a vehicle accidentally slammed into the side of the busy strip mall shop.
“It’s something you don’t see every day,” said Chatters stylist Brynn Sluggett.
Sluggett said she was cutting a client’s hair on Saturday around lunchtime in the Quarry hair salon’s second floor loft-style studio space, which overlooks the shop below, when “all of a sudden we just heard a huge bang.”
“We were like, ‘What just happened?’” Sluggett recalled, adding she and her colleagues thought a large shelf holding heavy shampoo bottles may have collapsed on the main floor. Those in the retail space were similarly surprised by the loud noise and wondered if someone may have fallen off or knocked over a heavy barber’s chair upstairs.
When Sluggett looked over, however, she saw a vehicle pushed up against an outer wall near the shop’s large picture window. The car had come up over the parking barrier, across the small sidewalk and crushed a yellow bin before hitting the building.
“I just see this blue car smashed into the wall,” she said. “There was just smoke and dust everywhere.”
Witnesses outside made sure the 65-year-old female driver of the car wasn’t seriously injured, and emergency officials and police were on scene shortly afterward.
Sluggett said employees from nearby businesses often take smoke breaks in the area of the sidewalk where the accident occurred.
“Luckily, there wasn’t anyone there this time,” she said. “It could have been worse.”
Cochrane RCMP Const. Kary Moore said no drugs or alcohol were involved and no charges are being considered against the woman, who simply “got confused (and) pushed the gas instead of the brake.”
