83-year-old ploughs into Mcdonald's, hits pedestrian

Police and firefighters at the Kamo McDonald's where an elderly driver hit a pedestrian before ploughing into the fast food outlet. PHOTO/JOHN STONE

A woman in her eighties has been taken to hospital after she drove into a McDonald's restaurant in Northland, along with a woman pedestrian she hit while driving into the fast food outlet.

Emergency services were called to the scene just after 9.40am today after the elderly woman's Subaru Impreza accelerated into the front of the McDonalds restaurant in Kamo.

Acting Sergeant Bill Jordan, of Kamo police, said the woman was trying to avoid another car that was reversing out off a parking spot in front of McDonalds when her foot got stuck on the accelerator.

Mr Jordan said the woman is believed to have hit a female pedestrian, believed to be in her teens or early 20s, before smashing into a window, leaving shattered glass spread over the floor and a dent in the building.

The elderly woman was taken to Whangarei Hospital with minor injuries and in shock, while the younger woman was also taken to the hospital with a relatively minor hip injury. Police are investigating the cause of the crash.

The McDonalds store manager said she may be in a position to talk about the accident later today.

A woman who was in McDonalds at the time said she heard what sounded like the restaurant drink machine toppling over and looked around to see the car shattering the window.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said she attended to the driver while the friend she'd been having coffee with tended to the injured pedestrian until an ambulance arrived.

"It looked like the driver was trying to avoid another driver who had pulled out of a carpark right in front of her," the woman said.

"It's just very good luck that nobody got seriously injured."

It was the second accident involving an elderly motorist driving into a shop in Whangarei in less than a month.

On January 25, a woman was left with broken bones and internal injures after a yellow Suzuki Liana driven by a 73-year-old man ploughed through the front of the Cheesecake Shop on Tarewa Rd.

The injured woman was covering her young daughter from the crash when she was hit while standing in line at the Cheesecake Shop.