LYNN — A pickup truck crashed into a boat parked in front of Top Shop Auto & Marine Service on Eastern Avenue on Monday morning, with two men barely making it out of the way in time.
Owner Ken Brassard was standing near the street with a customer around 11 a.m. when he heard what he said sounded like an explosion, causing him to turn around and see the pickup coming straight at him.
That “explosion” was the pickup truck hitting a parked car about 30 feet away before ramming into the boat at around 30 miles per hour.
In video surveillance footage that Brassard shared, he and the customer are seen running away from the boat seconds before the pickup crashed near where they were standing.
“We had our back to the truck, so if he hadn’t hit that parked car we wouldn’t have heard anything until he hit us,” Brassard said. “The parked car saved our lives.”
Brassard said the driver, who has not been identified, was unconscious at the wheel and still had his foot on the gas after the truck hit the boat.
Brassard and witnesses ran over to the truck after it crashed and had to break the window to get in and take the keys out of the ignition. At that point, the driver woke up.
Brassard said he seemed confused and in a daze, telling people at the scene that he had just had his COVID-19 shot. He said he waited the required 15 minutes for observation upon receiving the vaccine, but he started to feel like he was going to pass out when he was on Eastern Avenue, so he tried to pull over.
The driver said the next thing he knew, he woke up to people at the scene smashing his window.
Nobody was hurt, but the driver was taken to a hospital since he had lost consciousness and hit his head upon colliding into the boat.
Severe damage was done to the pickup truck, as well as the parked car, boat and a truck and trailer to which the boat was attached, according to Brassard. It took several hours to clean up the area.
Brassard said the boat was folded in and wrapped around a nearby pole, and its trailer went through the tailgate of the customer’s truck.
The tow truck had trouble separating the trailer from the truck it was attached to, so Brassard said he had to lift the truck up with his forklift to detach the trailer.
“I could see right away that the boat was destroyed, and the trailer was destroyed, but the driver was fine and that was important,” Brassard said. “I didn’t think much of what had happened until I looked at the video,” Brassard said. “You watch it back on the video and are like, ‘Wow that was actually a lot closer than I remembered.’”
Brassard said he has not heard any updates on the driver, but said he seemed OK at the scene.
Top Shop Auto & Marine Service closed for the rest of the day Monday, since the area wasn’t cleaned up until around 3 p.m., but has since returned to regular hours of operation.
