Car Rams into Sweet Pierre’s Chocolate Shop — Thankfully Minimal Damage and No Injuries [PHOTOS]

If life is like a box of chocolates, you don’t want to pick the car crash one. But Monday afternoon (Jan. 27), a car accident did occur when a car parked in the parking spot right in front of Sweet Pierre’s Chocolate Shop accelerated forward, jumped the curb, and rammed into the front of the store. While the distance it traveled was only about 6-7 feet and it wasn’t moving at tremendously high speed, the impact damaged the storefront, including the exterior bricks and the front door frame as well as the inside wall and window frame.

Fortunately, there were no injuries and the damage was contained to just a small portion of the store, which is located in the Wilton River Park shopping center at 5 River Rd.

“It happened around 2:30 p.m. I got a call from a friend at 2:40 saying, ‘Are you in town? Something happened to your store!'” said Sweet Pierre’s owner Hillary Morrissy, who was relieved that the accident occurred during a lull in the day when the store was closed.

“There were no kids running back and forth between Kumon and Press Burger. It could have been so much worse,” she said.

“The [driver] had apparently just been in UPS to ship something and then got in her car, my guess is she hit the gas instead of the brake, and she just jumped the curb and went straight into the front of the store,” Morrissy said.

The car narrowly missed hitting a support column outside the store, and thankfully it didn’t cause any major structural damage.

“We had this enormous, heavy planter in front of the store that was frozen, so it was very heavy. I think it absorbed some of the impact. The whole wall was pushed in, but the window didn’t break,” she said.

Morrissy considers herself very lucky — especially because she’s preparing for Valentine’s Day, one of her busiest times of the year.

“If the window had broken, I would have been very upset, because that was meant to be my window [display] for Valentine’s Day, and a lot of product would have to be thrown out because of the risk of glass contamination.”

She’s also lucky because the store is able to remain open. The Wilton building inspector assessed the damage and determined the structural supports were not compromised.

As the business owner, Morrissy is responsible for repairing the interior damage, including the front door, while landlord Kimco will handle the exterior repairs.

“I can’t really do anything until the insurance companies come out. Their adjuster is going to come out and then the adjuster for my company is going to come out. Nothing goes quickly. But I have insurance, [the driver] has insurance. So it’s all gonna be fine, right?” Morrissy said.

Ironically, Morrissy had previously considered the possibility of a car hitting the store. The first time she thought about it was a year ago when a car crashed through the windows of the Wilton Center Starbucks just around the corner. She had also emailed the landlord to say the parking spots in front of the store were dangerous.

“One spot is way too short for a car, so cars are constantly scraping the front, lower part of their car on the curb. We always jolt because we suddenly hear plastic scraping on concrete. It happens at least once or twice a week. I asked him to maybe put a bike rack there or something.”

Morrissy had once joked with her employees that if a car ever did drive through the front, she would just walk away from the business. Fortunately, this incident was not severe enough to make her reconsider now, and she opened up the day after the accident, joking about who or what might have intervened to protect the store and any people.

“Maybe it was St. Valentine. Or Cupid!”

GOOD Morning Wilton has requested a copy of the accident report from the Wilton Police and will update the story with any additional information.