Several Hurt When Car Smashes Into School

A 67-year-old woman hit the gas instead of the brakes and drove through a glass-walled learning center in Covina on Thursday, running over one woman and injuring several other adults and children, police said.

It was the second time a car had crashed into the building this year. Several business owners in the strip mall said they had asked the property owners for safety glass and parking bumps after the first accident.

According to police, the driver -- Min Ja Oh of Covina -- was picking up two grandchildren at the Kumon Math and Reading Center on East Badillo Street about 4 p.m. when her car suddenly sped forward, smashing through the glass storefront of the corner learning center and out the other side, dragging furniture and papers outside. Five children were inside studying at the time, two of whom were injured. Four staff members also were hurt.

“She went in one side and out the other, cutting across the corner of the building,” Covina Police Sgt. John Zumwalt said.

Shoppers and neighboring business owners rushed to the scene and saw a young woman trapped under the car.

“Everyone was horrified,” said Yvonne Shu, a 23-year-old UCLA student whose mother owns the dry-cleaning shop next door. “She was in obvious pain and definitely conscious.”

The 24-year-old victim was flown by helicopter to County USC Medical Center, where she was in serious condition, police said. The two injured children, both girls, were treated at the scene, as were two staff members. Two other adults were hospitalized. Their conditions weren’t serious, Zumwalt said.

Most afternoons, 15 to 20 students would be working at the learning center, said Larry Lambert, the center’s senior vice president of West Coast operations. The Kumon Learning Center chain tutors students after school and has centers worldwide, including 160 in Southern California, Lambert said.

Shu and employees of Gilbert Associates, a real estate office two doors down, said that in January, an elderly woman had driven over the 8-inch curb separating the parking lot from storefronts and crashed into the same learning center, smashing one glass wall but causing no injuries.

Christina Hazan, a representative of the learning center company in Los Angeles, said that after that incident, the center asked the property owners to install safety glass and parking bumps.

There were no parking bumps Thursday in front of the center, and police said they couldn’t immediately determine if the walls were made of safety glass.

The property owners could not be reached for comment.

Oh was not injured or cited, and an investigation was underway.

“People make mistakes,” said her husband, who did not want to give his name.

He said Oh had been dropping off grandchildren, and he believed the sun’s glare, heat and the crowded parking lot contributed to the accident.

“She [has] taken medicine to sleep,” he said late Thursday night. “I’m worried that she might suffer a shock.”

The crash was similar to recent accidents involving drivers who accidentally hit the gas pedal instead of the brakes, the best known being the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market crash in July 2003 that killed 10 people and injured dozens.

Last year, an Anaheim woman pleaded guilty to killing two girls when she accidentally pressed the gas pedal instead of the brakes and pinned them against a wall at Centralia Elementary School in Anaheim.