Employees at the Royal Bank of Canada on Commercial Street are lucky to have escaped injury after a car crashed into the branch Friday afternoon.
In an incident reported at 2:30 p.m., a 76-year-old female backed her grey 2004 Toyota Corolla into a pair of cars at the bank parking lot and then accelerated into the building.
“We're thinking that she probably panicked. Then she put the car in drive and accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake and drove into the building,” said Const. Gary O'Brien of Nanaimo RCMP, adding there were no injuries but there was extensive damage to the bank building.
“There are no charges,” said O'Brien. “We're chalking it up to just the driver with a little bit of age, a little bit of anxiety causing the accident.”
O'Brien estimates damage done was in the thousands of dollars and it was fortunate that building and cars were the only things damaged.
“There's no injuries to anyone inside or outside, very luckily, because where she went into the bank, there was an individual that was normally working at that work station and he was not there at the time,” said O'Brien. “It could've been bad.”