At 9:32am on Monday (August 5), a lorry parked on Avenue Road in Freshwater, Isle of Wight, jolted to life and smashed into the shop front of Kemkay Chemists, C+D has learned.
Archibald Coker, who jointly owns the pharmacy with his wife, yesterday (August 6) told C+D that “even up to now” he is “still trying to make sense of what happened”.
“I was on the premises, not on the shop floor, but I could see everything happening through the CCTV from the back” he said. “I've watched the CCTV over and over again”.
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“The lorry was parked…[then it] just moved, and moved so quickly, crashing into [two cars] then into the front of the shop,” he added.
“For the first 15- 20 minutes, you’re just trying to let it sink in. I mean, did this really happen?” he said, adding that he was left “shocked [and] upset” by the incident.
Police arrived at the scene “within 15 minutes”, Coker told C+D.
“Closing wasn't an option”
But despite the collision, Coker told C+D that the pharmacy team refused to let patients down.
He said that as “no one could come in through the front door,” the team “had to redirect people” though the pharmacy’s exit.
“Most of our customers are quite elderly – these are people that have routines [and] they probably only come out once or twice a week,” he added.
“We've been here now for almost 20 years [so] most of these elderly people are like family” – “some of them, we even knew their parents”, Coker told C+D.
Read more: Boots pharmacy reopens after Volkswagen crashed into storefront
“It's not something you can switch off just like that” he said. “Closing, in our opinion, wasn't an option”.
“We were still able to continue to get scripts to our customers…Yes, we lost over-the-counter trade, but that's another thing - the most important thing is to get these scripts out to the customers,” Coker told C+D.
The pharmacy started issuing scripts again “within half an hour”, he added.
“A miracle”
Coker told C+D that somehow “no one got hurt” in the accident.
“That was a miracle,” he said, adding that the “particular spot” of the crash was a high-traffic area for patients.
“At that time of the day…that's the place where [customers] meet, they stop, have a chat,” he said.
“We're talking about people that can't run, even if they see it coming, they can’t move that quickly,” he added.
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“They could be there for 10-15 minutes but thank God, none of them were around,” he said.
He added that even the lorry driver was unharmed – “he came in, he gave me all his details, we shook hands…I wished him all the best”.
Coker told C+D that he didn’t yet know how much the damage would cost to fix and that so far, the builders had just boarded up the front.
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He added that Kemkay Chemist is now serving customers through the front and back door.
“We are all fine” – “it’s business as usual,” he stressed.
In June, a Kamsons Pharmacy had to temporarily merge two of its Littlehampton branches after a confused driver slammed into a pharmacy wall.
And in December, a Boots pharmacy in Liverpool was closed temporarily after a Volkswagen crashed into its storefront.
