Raleigh police are on the hunt for two individuals after a car smashed into a potato chip store and a gym on Hillsborough Street, causing significant property damage. The incident, which occurred around 12:30 a.m. today, left Carolina Kettle and Goff Performance grappling with the aftermath of the collision.
According to reports by CBS 17, the car created a large hole near the entrance of Carolina Kettle, resulting in extensive damages, including broken shelves, a destroyed refrigerator, and a shattered front counter. "I got a call around 4 a.m. and I guess there had been a wreck here around one in the morning, so I headed over here to find the hole in the wall here," owner Josh Monaghan told CBS 17.
Witnesses reported seeing two people, a man and a woman, abandon the vehicle shortly after the crash. While Raleigh police have yet to make any arrests, they did deploy K9 units in an effort to locate the suspects, a detail pointed out by ABC11. Josh Monahan, speaking to ABC11, expressed the toll the crash took on his business. "Yeah, a little sad. You know, unfortunately, we got to close for a little while. Um, so, yeah, you never like to do that, but. But there's no stopping it when someone crashes their car in the front end of your small business," he said.
The adjacent gym, Goff Performance, also incurred damage due to the vehicle's impact on a shared wall. Daniel Goff, the gym's owner, told WRAL, "It's not ideal," adding that he would cancel classes for the day to ensure the building's structural integrity. Both business owners were present early Monday morning to assess the damage and begin the process of rebuilding and recovery.
Despite the circumstances, Monahan remains hopeful about Carolina Kettle's resilience, stating to ABC11, "It'll probably take a couple of weeks to replace everything. And then as far as getting the building itself fixed back up, I don't know how long that takes. So, you know, we still sell it online and so you can still get our products elsewhere, but we'll be closed here for the time being."
