A video game store called Gameco, in Joplin, Missouri, was absolutely trashed over the weekend when a car drove straight through the front wall and ploughed through several shelves of stock, tyres screeching the whole time.
Pocketoid and CRTpixels’ Jordan Starkweather shared some video of the crash—it’s his local games store— on Saturday, which you can see below in a video which is best watched with the sound on:
As Starkweather explains on Twitter, the driver was “the grandparent of the person who dodged out of the way” in the video (you can see a man on the left of the screen step aside moments before being hit), and appears to have been parked out front and accidentally reversed into the store—which was open and trading at the time—instead of driving away from it.
Having spoken with the lady behind the wheel, Gameco staff say she told them “the throttle was stuck”, and that “she had to slam it in drive to get it to stop going backwards or she would have went thru the entire building”. They also say that while she was “very shaken up and embarrassed”, they told her “no one was hurt and that’s all that [mattered]. Everything else can be replaced. Lives cant.’
The cases driven through were mostly the store’s 3DO and PS1 collection—this is an independent games store trading in loads of cool retro stuff, not a GameStop—though thankfully most of the games themselves were in storage out the back, with only the cases damaged.
Incredibly, this is the second time this has happened to the store, with the first instance coming at their old location. A photo taken after crash shows that aside from a broken rear window the car is in surprisingly good shape. Better shape than the Xbox cases crushed under its wheels, anyway.
While this would be devastating news for any local retailer—doubly so since this is the second time it’s happened—the Gameco staff at least appear to be taking it in their stride, posting on Facebook “Alright guys we get it, you want a GAMECO Drive-thru!”.
The store will be closed until repairs can be completed, but once they’re done, you can check them out here.