Paul Bass Photo
When a 16-year-old boy crashed into Christopher Martin’s restaurant at 1:45 a.m. Sunday, Chris Garaffa had a feeling of deja vu.
Garaffa was upstairs in his apartment above the popular Upper State Street restaurant and pub working on his computer when he heard the crash, then all the cops getting to work.
This time, he thought to himself, “this wasn’t gunshots.”
On April 1 at 2:37 a.m., sitting in the same apartment, Garaffa (pictured) was also disturbed by a loud scene outside the restaurant. That time he did hear gunshots. It turned out some off-duty cops were letting loose with their firearms on the sidewalk. (They were eventually arrested; read about that here.)
Today’s scary middle-of-the-night episode turned out to be a different matter.
“It was just screeching tires, and boom!”
A 16-year-old boy, chased north on Upper State Street by a police sergeant, had tried to make a left turn onto Clark Street. He missed it. Instead he plowed into sidewalk tables area where two customers were seated, then into the Christopher Martin’s facade.
One of the two patrons went to the hospital with minor injuries, according to police Lt. Jeff Hoffman.
The building suffered more serious damage. The driver smashed the front window and hit the building so hard it cracked and dislodged the bricks. Owner Chris Vigilante had to summon builder Keith May from Madison to work through the night until noon to erect and paint temporary walls and shore up the bricks. A city building official came out in the middle of the night, too, to make sure the building was safe.
If it had happened 10 minutes earlier, the driver would have run into six patrons out on the sidewalk, Vigilante said mid-day Sunday as he inspected the repair work.
“Somebody could have died,” he said, shaking his head at his sudden run of bad luck. “It was insane.”
The incident began at the corner of Chapel and State Streets. A 16-year-old boy got into an argument with, among others, a young woman. He got into her Volvo and drove it away, according to Hoffman. The young woman’s father had rented the Volvo, he said.
The boy has a suspended license. He also “appeared intoxicated,” Hoffman said.
The young man stopped Sgt. Chris Rubino. He told her someone had just stolen the Volvo.
Rubino followed the boy up State Street. Nearing Clark Street, he got close enough to call in the license plate number. That’s when the boy made the fateful left turn.
Hoffman said the boy went to the hospital, too, but wasn’t badly hurt. Police are investigating the case to determine precisely which charges to bring against him.
“Things keep happening on this corner. I think it’s cursed,” said Garaffa, who just signed a new two-year lease on his apartment.
J.R. Unitas (in foreground) of Keith May Builders, and the grandson of the Baltimore Colts quarterback with the same last name, eyes the new TV with owner Vigilante.
The crash did produce one upside for Christopher Martin’s regulars: The crash smashed a 50-inch Samsung TV. Sunday afternoon a replacement arrived — with a 64-inch screen.