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With raw video of the damage

It felt like an earthquake to Larry LoDico.

One moment, LoDico was conducting a staff meeting at Atlantic Medical Supply, the Galloway Township company he owns with his wife Anne. It was 9:27, on a boring, sunny Wednesday.

And then ...

"I heard a loud boom, and immediately tried to get everybody to the back of the building," Larry LoDico said.

The boom that disrupted LoDico's meeting was created by a Subaru Forrester driving through the front of his business. The car was lodged into the building for about an hour, as emergency workers worked.

Eventually a tow truck appeared. As the operator pried the car out of the building, windows shattered, and mortar and wooden beams spilled onto the sidewalk. The door that Anne LoDico walked through minutes before the accident was detached from its frame, loose, leaning against the wall.

Anne LoDico is just thankful everyone was OK.

"The part of the office that was damaged is our waiting area, and people are usually sitting in chairs or standing against that wall," she said. "Thank goodness nobody was sitting there when this happened. This could have been a lot worse."

Police identified the driver as John Munton, 79, of Brigantine. Munton's wife, Ruth, was also in the vehicle, and they escaped through the rear hatch. Police still aren't sure if driver error or car malfunction caused the accident.

The LoDicos, who are Galloway Township residents in their 40s, have been running Atlantic Medical Supply from this location inside the Township Office Center along Chris Gaupp Drive, since 2001. The company is located a block from AtlantiCare Regional Medical Center's Mainland Campus.

Atlantic Medical Supply serves as a retail store, but also offers services such as wound care and compression safety. Patients rely on Atlantic Medical Supply for vital services, so the company will be open for business at 9 a.m. Thursday, operating from the rear of the building. The company's Healthy Leg Day is still scheduled for Friday.

After the fire trucks and police cars drove away Wednesday, Anne LoDico stood on the sidewalk, looking at the damage and talking with her co-workers about the accident.

The employees said the accident felt as though the ground was shaking.

On a boring, sunny Wednesday at 9:27 a.m., it did, giving the workers a staff meeting -- and an unexpected guest -- they will not soon forget.

2 comments:

• seamike (5) posts 6:26 pm

  This is what happens when you put keys into somebodys hand that shouldn't be driving. Brigantine offers free transportation bus !!! I guess he'll have to start using it..lol (I hope he isn't one of the volunteers that drive the bus ) ! It reported on the news that the wall he went threw is usually filled with patients.. This idiot could have killed somebody.. I hope the state has enough sense to not give him his license back before he is re-tested !!

• njdlmkr (428) posts 11:21 am

  This is how the new Health Care Drive-Thru Plan would look!

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