By Marie Szaniszlo
The Boston Herald
PEABODY, Mass. — Stunned onlookers yesterday were calling an accident in Peabody a “St. Patrick’s Day miracle” because no one was killed when a car driven by an elderly woman smashed through a medical practice’s packed waiting room.
Five people, including the 69-year-old driver and her husband, were taken to the hospital with what appeared to be minor injuries following the 10:44 a.m. crash at Internal Medicine Physicians of the North Shore on Centennial Drive, police said.
“I just can’t believe no one got seriously hurt,” Officer Alan Graglia said. “I guess it’s the luck of the Irish.”
Susan Herlihy, 55, of Lynn had just settled into a chair in the waiting room when she heard what sounded like an “explosion.”
“The next thing I knew, I felt the bumper of the car push the chair I was in across the room,” Herlihy said as she plucked glass from her hair after she was released from the Lahey Clinic with minor cuts. “I will never sit next to a glass window again.”
Dr. Joseph August, the practice’s CEO, was seeing a patient — who happens to be a firefighter — when he heard staff members scream.
“We ran out and there was an Infinity wedged into the corner of the bathroom,” he said.
A woman who was inside the bathroom had to be rescued, he said, and firefighters had to tear the car’s roof off to get to the driver and her husband, who were identified by their son and police as Liduina and Joseph Goulart of Peabody.
“I’m gonna plead the Fifth,” Joe Goulart, 44, also of Peabody, said when asked what caused the accident. “My mom’s nervous. She has a little pain in her chest. My dad’s OK.”
The couple, Herlihy and two people in the lobby at the time were taken to area hospitals to be evaluated, police said.
The car, a 2006 Infinity G35, was impounded, and the cause of the crash is under investigation.
Liduina Goulart has three surchargeable accidents on her record from 1994, 1988 and 1983 — all of them in Peabody, according to the state Registry of Motor Vehicles.
Yesterday’s crash is the latest in a string of dramatic Bay State accidents involving elderly drivers.
The crashes have prompted calls for new requirements for senior citizens to qualify for license renewals.