Witnesses to Horror

“Our mouths just went open. For minutes there was screaming and crying. I saw a little foot. There was a woman saying, ‘My baby, my baby.’ I just thought, ‘Boy, was I lucky.’ ” Maureen Lipman of Sherman Oaks, who went to the market carrying her Yorkie.

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“He was knocking people over like bowling pins.” Robert Newman, 58, of Santa Monica.

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“It was 10 minutes to closing time and I was trying to grab some tangerines. So I ran ahead and suddenly I heard a car bearing down on me ....I was screaming my lungs out. There was no one to help because everyone was in pain.” Lynne Carter, of Santa Monica, who got separated from her 83-year-old husband and found him lying on the ground, bleeding.

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“I thought it was a table that flew up in the air and hit me. Literally I couldn’t see the car because there was too much stuff flying in front of it. I didn’t know it was a car until I was lying on the ground. When I was going down, I said, ‘Oh boy, this is it.’...They said I was the lucky one.” Bernadette Lucier, a jewelry saleswoman at Tiffany’s in Beverly Hills, who was hit while walking to her car with six bags of juice, cucumbers, eggs and homemade crackers.

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“It was terrible. I heard this kind of a funny wail coming from up towards 4th Street. I didn’t know what it was. It sounded almost mechanical. I realized it was people screaming. All of a sudden, BAM! There it was, throwing stuff everyplace. Tents and trucks and tables and vegetables. You see that stuff in the movies. It was amazing.” Bill Coleman, a produce farmer from Carpinteria.