Cars crash into this military surplus shop in Norfolk so often the owners switched a glass wall to brick

Oct. 05--NORFOLK -- Darnell Johnson was working Thursday morning in the warehouse of M&G Sales, a military surplus store on Granby Street, when he felt the building shudder.

"This is a pretty big place to be shaking," said Johnson, the store's floor manager. "(It) basically rocked this warehouse."

The culprit? A driver making a left turn from westbound 27th Street swerved and crashed a Volvo sedan into the store, police said.

Around 10 a.m., the Volvo was in the far left lane of 27th, a one-way street, when the driver of an GMC SUV in the middle lane tried to make a lane change to the left and struck the Volvo, said Norfolk police spokesman Daniel Hudson. That caused the Volvo to go into the building, he said.

No one was injured. The SUV driver was charged with an unsafe lane change and the Volvo driver was charged with driving without a license, Hudson said.

Though the incident's likely to be costly for M&G -- "there was major structural damage," says owner Laura Friedman -- the crash itself didn't faze her brother and co-owner, Larry Friedman.

"Unfortunately this is a common occurrence," he said. And it's almost always because of similar middle lane turn accidents.

"We have a long history of cars ending up in here," Larry said. Once it happened three times in one day.

The Friedman family has run the surplus store since the 1940s, according to Pilot archives.

Larry said the wall used to be made of glass -- but due to the constant accidents, they put in brick.

"But that didn't help today."

He doesn't know what the final price tag of fixing the damage will be, but to date they've spent roughly $50,000 on repairs.

He said he "heard a really loud bang" when the crash happened this morning.

"It was really loud. Then I stuck my head out of the front door and saw (the car)."

Larry said first responders on scene had left the car in the building as of midday, worried taking it out at the wrong angle could collapse the whole side of the building.

Luckily, Larry said, both drivers this time have insurance. So do the Friedmans.

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