Vehicle hits First Realty building
Published 12:00 am Wednesday, January 9, 2002
Monday afternoon, as Diane Spann left the First Realty office for lunch, she probably never imagined that when she returned there would be a car sitting at her desk.
Spann's desk is located in front of the large plate-glass window at First Realty in downtown Greenville and a vehicle ended up parked in the window. Luckily, the driver of the vehicle, Sam Durant, of Greenville, was not injured in the accident.
Spann said that fotunately, she had gone to lunch at a different time than usual. "Normally, at that time, I would have been sitting at my desk right where the vehicle ended up," Spann said.
"The Good Lord's looking out for me," she said. "If I had been sitting there, I might have gotten cut by the glass."
According to Spann, the crash knocked things off her desk and jarred it. She said she believes the big screen television located in the front of the office took a lot of the force of the impact and kept more damage from occurring.
Mary McKinley, owner of First Realty, and Joan Jones, realtor, were inside the office when the accident occurred.
McKinley said that she and Jones were in McKinley's office when the car burst into the front of the building.
"We heard a lot of noise and then a loud explosion," McKinley said. "It sounded like a bomb, but we later decided it must have been the television set we keep in the window to run our ads on."
McKinley said that there were many ways in which the circumstances kept people from being hurt in the crash.
"We are lucky that Diana was not at her desk," McKinley said. "We have also thought about it since and if there had been anyone on the sidewalk, they would have been killed."
McKinley added that First Realty is continuing with business as usual.
"It's a little cold, but we are conducting business as usual," McKinley said.