Eight injured, including 3-year-old child, when car plows into San Diego restaurant

SAN DIEGO —  Eight people were injured, including a 3-year-old child, after a car plowed into a restaurant in Lincoln Park during the lunch hour Tuesday, San Diego police and fire officials said.

A Ford Mustang and a Honda collided at 47th Street and Logan Avenue, sending the Honda into the Fresheria juice bar shortly after noon, Officer Scott Lockwood said.

Lockwood said the Mustang driver fled, but officers detained her and later arrested her on suspicion of driving under the influence and hit and run.

Officials said eight people were taken to hospitals, according to a San Diego Fire-Rescue Department spokeswoman. Initially, they said seven people had been injured. Lockwood said the injured including two people in the Honda and two people inside the shop.

Cashier Emely Gomez said she was at the register ringing up a sale for a smoothie and soup with a customer when the car burst through the glass and slammed the customer into a wood counter. The crash pushed Gomez about a foot as well.

Gomez, 24, said she started crying and begging for help when she saw the badly injured customer trapped between the car and the counter.

“I started saying ‘Oh my God, there is a person (trapped).’ I think nobody saw that she was there. Only me. They thought only the car was there,” Gomez said.

More than an hour after the crash, a shaken Gomez said that a second before the crash, she took three steps from the customer to get a napkin and suddenly saw the vehicle plow through the window and heard the explosion of glass.

“The way the car hit — that was for me,” Gomez said of the near miss. “I would have been dead.”

She said the car took out the register, the wood counter, “everything.”

Gomez said other customers were in the shop.

Police closed off the intersection as they investigated. As of 2 p.m., the crumpled Mustang remained on the street near the shop, and the Honda was still inside the building.

San Diego Union-Tribune photographer Jarrod Valliere contributed to this report.