Man drives car through window of Reading Starbucks

By Alli Knothe, Globe Correspondent

A man drove his car through the window of a Reading Starbucks this morning, police said.

At about 9:20 a.m., the man hit the gas pedal instead of the brake while pulling his Volvo into a parking spot at the Walker Brook Drive establishment, said Lieutenant Richard Robbins. No one was injured.

The car went through the window at the front of the store and struck the area where customers fix their coffee, he said.

“It was a miracle” that no one was hurt, Robbins said. “They were all to the left when the car came flying through.”

Captain Phil Boisvert of the Reading fire department said the car sailed through the plate glass window, across a seating area, and hit the counter, pushing it two feet into the area where employees take orders and prepare the coffee.

He said it was lucky that the four people who were working were not in that area, and that the two customers in the shop were leaving at the time of the crash.

Boisvert said the window was an important structural component of the building.

The driver was charged with operating to endanger, Robbins said.

A Starbucks employee who answered the phone this afternoon said the shop is still closed but declined to comment further.