When a photo session at Cloud 9 Studios in Wesley Chapel scheduled for 1 p.m. on April 25 was cancelled, owner Jeanine McLeod took her one-year-old son, James, and went out to grab lunch.
The office manager, Mary Gullett, stayed in the studio while assistant Carla Holness photographed her own three children —ages almost 1, 4, and 5 — in the back.
That’s when, all of a sudden, a car came crashing through the front doors of Cloud 9’s building in the Summergate Professional Center behind Sam’s Club off S.R. 56.
“I heard tires screeching and felt the building rattle,” Carla says.
According to a report by the Florida Highway Patrol, 80-year-old Theresa Drummond was attempting to park her car when she pressed the gas pedal instead of the brake.
That sent her 2005 while Ford Taurus over the curb, in between two pillars and halfway through the door into the building at 27340 Cashford Circle.
“What’s crazy is that Jeanine is always there with James and I’m not usually there with my kids,” says Carla. “About half an hour before it happened, the kids were all running around playing, so I’m just so thankful that they were out to lunch and that my kids were in the back.”
Jeanine echoed Carla’s grateful attitude.
“All of us are a little shook up, but I’m just so thankful everyone is okay,’’ Jeanine said. “ My son loves to play at the windows with the curtains, and he’s always up there looking as the cars go by.”
Both ladies are amazed that the car fit exactly through the columns on either side of the front door. “The car had to be lined up perfectly,” says Jeanine. “Any farther to the left or right and she would have hit steel columns.”
According to the Florida Highway Patrol, Drummond was not transported to a medical facility. The studio was temporarily boarded up until new doors could be installed.