WEST PARIS — A sport utility vehicle went through the West Paris General Store on Main Street on Friday evening, ending up in the cooler and missing clerks and customers along the way, Maine State Police Trooper Gregory Tirado said.
Tony Mason, 28, of Bethel was eating a sandwich in his 2005 Ford Escape parked outside the store when he began to choke and his vehicle took off , the investigator said.
“He said he was eating a sandwich and may have begun to choke. The next thing he remembers he was in the store,” Tirado said. “His foot must have hit the gas. Either he blacked out or passed out and when he came to he was in the store. There were no suspicious circumstances; he was not under the influence of alcohol or drugs. He may have suffered some medical condition.”
Mason was taken by ambulance to Stephens Memorial Hospital in Norway to be checked, he said.
Tirado said none of the six or so customers, including several children, were hurt in the 6:45 p.m. crash. Neither was clerk Sarah Clark, he said.
Resident Bertha DeHaas said she was in the store minutes before the crash and saw the driver looking around before buying a sandwich and leaving.
She left and returned two minutes after the crash, she said, looking at the vehicle parked next to the checkout counter. She said it had gone up a step, into the front door and across the store into the milk cooler.