EXCLUSIVE VIDEO: Driver Crashes Through Westchester County Restaurant Wall
BRIARCLIFF MANOR, N.Y. (CBSNewYork) -- It was a close call for diners at a Westchester County restaurant Sunday night when a driver lost control and crashed right through the front wall.
CBS2's Ali Bauman obtained exclusive video and spoke with the driver who said just what went wrong.
84-year-old Ted McGrath says it wasn't exactly how he planned on entering his local watering hole.
"I was sort of flying through the air in the car and I thought well this is great," he said Monday. "I'm making a very different entrance into Squire's."
McGrath says he was trying to park last night around 8:00 p.m. for a bite to eat at Squire's in Briarcliff Manor but may have accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brake.
Owner Kurt Knox says he was just a few feet away when it happened.
"I had my back turned and I jumped, turned around, and saw a car coming through the wall," he said.
"Glass flying, people running, it was crazy," patron Jerry Lent recalled.
The owner says it was a family of four sitting near the wall, the children no older than 10. When the car crashed into the wall they ran off, miraculously unscathed.
"It's God's grace they weren't hurt," Knox said. "I don't know how they weren't hurt."
There aren't any hurt feelings, either. Squire's has been in town for fifty years and McGrath has been going for twenty of them. In the commotion, he says he was brought home on an empty stomach.
"I was going to have a nice dinner," he laments. "The thing that bothers me is that the food there is so good and I didn't get a chance to have dinner."
Luckily for McGrath, Squire's is already back open and under repair. He says he has to keep going because the owner would miss him too much.
Police say McGrath wasn't intoxicated at the time, and call the crash an honest mistake.