BMW crashes into sports clinic storefront in North Vancouver

A BMW SUV crashed into a North Vancouver business' storefront Monday afternoon. (Courtesy: Liam Stock)

A North Vancouver business has been forced to close after an SUV crashed through its front window Monday afternoon.

Deep Cove’s typically quiet Dollarton Village shopping precinct was shaken when the driver of a silver BMW X3 veered her car onto the curb and into the floor-to-ceiling glass windows at the entrance of physiotherapy clinic North Shore Sports Medicine.

Clinic manager Liam Stock had left the store just shortly after 10 a.m., mere moments before the collision, and was alerted to the incident via a phone call from a worried staff member explaining a car had driven through the front of the store.

“To the best of my knowledge, it was just an instance of hitting the gas, the wrong pedal,” said Stock, adding how the driver had been a woman in her late 50s or 60s.

“She had kind of jumped the curb, hit the metal support beam, went through that and then crashed into the front door frame of the clinic,” he said.

Of the three staff members who were in the store at the time of the crash, one was in the staff room and had heard the commotion, one was seeing to a patient a few feet away from the shop’s front, and a third was sitting at the front desk “about a foot or two” from where the car had come to a halt, he said.

“I don’t know if she had time to react, but she wasn’t injured in any way,” said Stock.

“She is definitely shaken up. We’ve checked in with her a few times today, and she said she’s okay. It’s just one of those lucky moments, I guess.”

As for the extent of the damage, Stock said the car suffered some superficial damage to its front, while the front-facing windows and door or the clinic have been left “completely shattered.”

A metal support beam for the awning of the storefront was left “resting on the hood of the BMW,” he said.

The Deep Cove outpost – the business houses a second store on North Vancouver’s Brooksbank Avenue– will be boarded up Monday evening and will be out of action Tuesday, Stock said. He hopes business can resume by means of the back door come Wednesday, but it will likely be “several weeks” before the business is functioning as it once was, he added.

According to a statement issued by the North Vancouver RCMP, a vehicle drove into the business around 10 a.m. Monday morning in was appeared to be a case of “peddle mistake.” It appears to be a case of peddle mistake.

No one was injured, police said, and “alcohol and speed are not a factor.”

Stock noted that the incident marked the second time a car had been driven through a storefront in the Deep Cove shopping village, following a similar crash that occurred at a Nesters grocery store in 2023.