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Car crashes into Bath County store
BY CHARLES GARRATT • STAFF WRITER
 | | The front door has been propped back up, the wall pushed back down, the dust cleaned from the floor, the power turned off, but the inside of Tender Heart Quilts store on Route 42 south of Millboro Springs is far from back to normal. A car crashed through the front of the store last week. The driver was injured but no one in the store was hurt. The clerk was standing behind the counter (left) with her back to the wall only moments before the accident. |
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MILLBORO SPRINGS - Cheryl Thompson, owner of Tender Heart Quilts, had worried about a truck or car speeding by on Route 42 would crash into her store. Such a crash came last Wednesday, but not in the way Thompson anticipated.
Rather than veering off the highway, a customer from Roanoke lost control of her vehicle in the parking lot and drove through the front door and wall of the store. Damage was extensive. No one in the store was injured.
Peggy White, the driver of the 2003 Toyota Corolla was injured. She was taken to the hospital where she was treated and released.
Thompson's shop will be closed for the rest of March, normally her busiest spring month. Classes scheduled for March have been postponed and the big spring sale rescheduled for April.
 | | Friends and family boarded up the front of Tender Heart Quilts after a car went through the door and adjacent wall. The shop will be closed for the month of March while the destroyed wall is removed and rebuilt. (Recorder photos by Charles Garratt) |
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The accident "could have been very bad," Thompson said. The car came through the wall, cutting electrical lines and pushing the wall against the counter and both across the floor.
"If anybody had been behind the counter they would have really gotten hurt," Thompson said. Thompson and most of the people attending a class had just gone down the steps when the accident happened. Otherwise they would have been in the middle of the crash.
White was a first time visitor to the store. Thompson characterized her as a "sweet little lady." White had parked her vehicle facing the building and was preparing to leave when the accident happened. White said the vehicle just lurched forward out of control when she started it. The tires on the front of the vehicle were still spinning on the tile floor when Thompson got upstairs.
"I thought one of the big trees had fallen," Thompson said of the noise she heard upstairs. The sales area was full of smoke and dust from the broken wall and spinning tires.
Family and friends helped Thompson board up the front of the building and clean up the shop. The entire front wall will need to be removed and replaced, she said. She hopes to reopen by April.
Thompson plans to celebrate the fifth anniversary of her store this summer. She stocks 1,400 bolts of fabric and many other books and supplies for sewing and quilting. Downstairs is a large room for quilting and classes.
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