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A truck rammed into the side of Dehoff’s Key Market on Thursday afternoon, prompting the temporary closure of the market. The Redwood City Fire Department said nobody was hurt.
The crash happened at around 12:30 p.m. on April 2 during the store’s lunch rush, when lots of customers were shopping, store manager Roger Horstman said. There were 24 employees working at the time.
The Redwood City Fire Department reported that firefighters with their department, as well as Menlo Park Fire District and Woodside Fire Protection District, responded to the report at 12:35 p.m. and confirmed there were no injuries on the part of the driver or bystanders.
Redwood City Police Lt. Jeffrey Clements said the incident appears to have been caused by a medical emergency involving the driver, but that there were no signs of impairment. The police department and American Medical Response San Mateo County also arrived on the scene to assist.
The grocery store’s owner, Chris Dehoff, said that a pickup truck “just ran through” the front of the store into the produce department. The truck’s driver had a child in the car with him, he said.
“We had customers and crew members standing in that area moments before,” Dehoff said, “so we’re just very lucky that no one was in the wrong spot at the wrong time.”
Johnny Kuczma, a Dehoff’s employee, said he was just down one of the aisles that was struck.
“All of a sudden I heard this big, old, crunching sound,” Kuczma said. “I look forward and here’s the whole produce case coming down, barely hitting the aisle that I’m on.”
Kuczma said staff finished ringing up shoppers who were in the store, eventually clearing everyone out of the market at 1063 Upton St. in Redwood City.
The pickup truck was later seen driving away after a tow truck pulled it out of the side of the building. Shortly after that, a building inspector arrived, Dehoff said, and told him there’s no major structural damage to the market.
His plan is to cordon off an area of the store, the owner said, so that staff can clean it up and reopen on Friday, “if all goes well.”
The accident triggered the closure of one block of Upton Street between Euclid and Roosevelt avenues, where Dehoff’s is located, according to an alert sent by Redwood City Police Department just after 1 p.m.
