Dodge crashes through State Farm Insurance office in Ceres

Nov. 16--It all happened so quickly, Vanessa Monteiro said she doesn't remember the Dodge Neon crashing through her work place.

All she could recall was that she was eating lunch at a table one moment, and was on a couch on the other side of the break room the next.

All 14 feet of the Dodge was inside the State Farm Insurance office at the Ceres Plaza Shopping Center on East Hatch Road when police and fire arrived at the scene Wednesday afternoon at about 2 o'clock.

The driver of the Dodge told police he was traveling west through the parking lot when suddenly his brakes stopped working. He drove between two parked cars, hitting the sides of both, then veered south and directly into the break room of the State Farm office.

Monteiro and her co-workers escaped injury.

She said she heard a loud boom as the Dodge took out the table at which she was sitting.

"I just remember screaming ... everything in front of me was gone and I was on the couch," Monteiro said.

She assured her co-workers on the other side of the wall that she was OK. She then turned her attention to the man in the car.

Monteiro said he was uninjured but the break room table was preventing him from opening his door. She moved the table so he could get out of and the two exited the building the only way they could -- by climbing onto the trunk of the Dodge and through the hole it had just created.

Erin Tracy: 209-578-2366, @ModestoBeeCrime

___

(c)2016 The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.)

Visit The Modesto Bee (Modesto, Calif.) at www.modbee.com

Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.