2 Hurt When Car Plows Into Orange Supermarket

A 73-year-old nun backing out of a handicapped parking spot plowed her sedan through the front doors of a Stater Bros. supermarket in Orange on Tuesday, police said, crushing a customer’s foot and injuring a worker.

It was the second time this year that a vehicle has crashed into the store.

Authorities said the driver was disoriented after Tuesday’s crash, in which her car looped backward from its parking place near one set of glass doors into the other entrance and came to rest 10 feet inside the store.

“She’s not aware of what happened,” said Orange Police Sgt. Dave Hill.

Two people were hospitalized with minor injuries after the 11:51 a.m. accident: a customer with a crushed right foot and a clerk whose leg was cut when the four-door 1989 Toyota Camry hit her cash register. The driver was uninjured.

Officials at the Stater Bros. corporate headquarters in Colton said new precautions would be taken in the East Collins Avenue store’s parking lot in addition to those taken after the January incident.

The nun, whose name was not released, is a member of Sisters of St. Joseph of Orange, said Sister Mary Bernadette, a spokeswoman for the order.

She crashed through the same set of doors that another elderly driver ran through Jan. 6.

In that incident, retired engineer Elmer C. Anderson, 69, mistakenly hit the accelerator instead of the brake and overshot a handicapped parking space. A woman was pinned under his Ford Explorer for 30 minutes and suffered injuries to her head and torso. Four other people suffered cuts and were treated at the scene. Anderson was not cited, but police asked the Department of Motor Vehicles to review his license.

On the same day, an 87-year-old driver accused of killing 10 people when he plowed through a crowd at the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market in July pleaded not guilty to 10 felony counts of vehicular manslaughter with gross negligence. That case renewed debate over regulation of elderly drivers, who experts say are more likely to be in accidents involving unintentional acceleration.

In Tuesday’s crash, police will be investigating whether the woman’s accelerator got stuck or whether some other vehicle malfunction played a part.

Sister Mary Bernadette said she believed the driver had lost control. She refused to identify the nun by name. “I haven’t talked to her,” she said three hours after the crash. “I’m headed to the scene now.”

After the January incident, the store repainted the parking lot to move the handicapped spaces farther from the entrances and installed concrete trash cans in their place, said Stater Bros. President Jack Brown. The area immediately in front of each entrance is striped as a no-parking zone, and small curbs stand between the parking spaces and the store.

After Tuesday’s crash, store officials said they would move another handicapped parking space even farther from the entrance. Also, two iron posts -- wide enough apart for two shopping carts side by side but not for a car -- will be installed in front of each set of doors.

“We’ve had very few accidents like this at our stores, but to have two at the same store is unbelievable,” Brown said. “It was awfully odd. We’re very fortunate that no one was seriously hurt in either incident.”

The store reopened Tuesday two hours after the crash, with a clear plastic sheet in place of the crushed double doors. Workers were sweeping up debris and glass scattered around four cash registers, with the other six open to customers.

Police had removed the Camry, its left headlight crushed and glass shards from the door covering its roof, from the store.

The scene was more chaotic during and just after the collision, witnesses said.

Secretary Ana Canas, 55, was in the front of the store buying lottery tickets from a machine when she heard someone yell, “Watch out! Something’s happening!”

Canas saw the sedan enter the store behind her and arc around, hurling shattered glass into her mouth before it stopped at the cash register.

“The car came really close to me,” Canas said. “I was screaming. Everyone was screaming.”

The driver got out of the car and told Canas she didn’t know what had happened.

Canas never picked up her lottery tickets. “I’m lucky enough not be injured,” she said.

A cashier at an adjacent dollar store said she heard the collision but did not see it.

“I heard sounds like glass dropping and something heavy hitting, but it didn’t shake the building,” said Tam Luong, 47. She walked outside and saw a woman standing in the parking lot, screaming as she looked at the store, but the car had already gone all the way inside.

“I feel scared,” Luong said. “It could happen to us.”

The owner of a liquor store in the same shopping center said crashes drive away business. Customers get scared, and each incident has closed the parking lot for at least an hour, said Martha Exeni, 25.

That it’s happened twice is “crazy,” Exeni said. “Now every time people shop around here they’re going to think about that.”

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Times staff writer David Reyes contributed to this report.