Car into building

A 75-year-old Odessa woman escaped injury after she drove her Lincoln Towncar into the east side of the H-E-B grocery story shortly after 10 a.m. Wednesday morning in the 3800 block of 42nd Street.

Police on the scene said Nancy Brewer pulled out of a handicapped parking space and mistook her car's gas pedal for its brake pedal, which caused her to lose control of her vehicle.

In a panic, emergency personnel and witnesses said, she then accelerated as she hit a parked Cadillac, a sign and then sideswiped a tree that knocked her off course from the glass store fronts of a beauty supply shop and a nail salon, instead hitting the H-E-B building at a speed of between 20 and 30 mph.

"She panicked is what it was," Cpl. David Lara of the Odessa Police Department said, standing next to a damaged Cadillac that had been whipped around onto a parking lot median. "In the midst of all that panic, instead of stepping on the brake, she stepped on the gas and finally hit something bigger than her."

Brian Van, an employee of the Luxury Nails beauty salon who witnessed the incident, said the shop was saved by the tree that caused Brewer's car to veer west from its initial northbound heading and hit the side of the grocery store instead of the glass storefront of the salon.

He said she was going "fast, really fast, probably like 25 or 30 (mph)."

"It was just like the movies," Van said, grinning. "Like something from Hollywood. I started running. I saw the car and started running. It happened really fast."