Ankeny business in shambles after car crashes through storefront

ANKENY, Iowa — It’s every small business owner’s worst nightmare, and for Ryan Martin, it became a reality after a driver crashed into his storefront during business hours Sunday afternoon.

“I was in shock, and just thankful that no one was hurt,” said Martin.

What used to be tables of shoes and an entire wall display, it’s now all ruined — and during the store’s busiest time of year.

“Everybody’s getting shoes for back to school and, I don’t know, its an unfortunate deal, this is our busiest time of the year probably and now we’re going to be shut down for a while,” said Martin.

Martin has run this location of Fit To Be Tied Shoes for six years and says an accident like this is a first.

“A gentleman peered off Oralabor and came through the grass and managed to miss both pillars and came through the window and proceeded back to the far room there and took out my wall and luckily didn’t kill anybody,” said Martin.

After assessing the damage, Martin got to work.

“We had to put the wall up where the windows used to be to keep looters and people from coming in.”

In the midst of all the chaos, Martin said there was some normalcy.

“The car was in the store and somebody came in to do a pickup, they had special ordered a pair of HOKA11’s, and he came in and walked through the glass and bought the shoes and was in jaw dropping awe like what happened.”

Despite the damage, there’s a silver lining, at the time of the crash only two people were in the store and no one was injured, even the driver.

“They took him [the driver] in the cop car, they didn’t take him in the ambulance. There are two little holes there where his wheels were still spinning because he had his foot on the gas, he was full throttle,” said Martin.

Now, the road ahead involves insurance claims, cleaning up shoes and glass, and working toward getting back to normal.

“If this was my only store, I would be a little madder. I’m just glad nobody got hurt,” said Martin.

His goal now is to get the store cleaned and operating to hopefully host a sale to raise funds for store repairs.

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