Car Slams Optometrists’ Encino Store, Injuring 4

A car smashed into an optometrists’ office Monday afternoon, shattering the window, mowing down the front counter and flipping a patient who was looking for glasses onto the hood of the car.

Four people were injured, including two patients, the driver of the car and a passenger, said a spokesman for Los Angeles Fire Department.

“This place looks like a bomb hit it,” said Joanne Ceteras-Hale , office manager for the Optometric Center of Encino while waiting for workers to board up the broken window.

The car slammed into the offices of doctors Harry Enenstein and Harold Drapkin beside a Ralphs market on Ventura Boulevard about 4:10 p.m.

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Fire Department spokesman Brian Humphrey said the driver, a 40-year-old woman, and the passenger, a 44-year-old woman, both from Encino, were examined at Northridge Hospital Medical Center and neither suffered from “apparent visible injuries.”

Ceteras-Hale, an employee of the Encino store for the past two years, was behind the counter when she saw the car burst through the window.

“The entire glass window just exploded when the car came flying through the store. I was facing the car so I turned and ran to the back,” said Ceteras-Hale. “The three patients had their backs to it so they had no time to react and were hit.”

Ceteras-Hale said the car drove through the store, carrying the door that it had ripped off the store front. Then it hit a patient, flipping him over the hood and carrying him and the door to the rear of the store.

“He had so much blood on him, I couldn’t believe it,” she said.

Ceteras-Hale said the other injured patient was a teenage girl who appeared to have a broken leg.

Identities of the victims and the driver were unavailable Monday night. The cause of the accident was under investigation.