16-year-old crashes car into dental office
No one hurt, but incident displaces Dr. Marisol Lopez-Belio’s practice.
No one was injured in Wellington crash, including the car’s driver and two of his friends, as incident displaces doctor’s practice.
WELLINGTON — Dr. Marisol Lopez-Belio had just sat down with a patient on Thursday when the walls exploded around her.
A car, driven by a 16-year-old, slammed into Lopez-Belio’s Wellington dental office, blowing out walls, crumpling equipment and shattering the normalcy of a routine day at the office.
Lopez-Belio was in the room next door when she heard a loud boom, and then watched helplessly as the office where she has based her practice for more than two decades broke apart.
“I looked up, and there’s a car all the way through the operatory next door,” she said. “Thank God no one was in that room. They all would have died. The dental chair was under the car. Chairs were crushed. The laser equipment was destroyed. The ceiling caved in. The walls caved in. It was unbelievable.”
Nobody was injured in the crash, including the car’s driver and two of his friends. They were lucky, Lopez-Belio said, as were the people inside her office.
Lopez-Belio’s assistant was nearly pinned by a sink that was pushed up against her back when the car barreled into the office, while her patient was inches from getting crushed by a crumpling wall, she said.
Other occupants of the twostory building at 1200 Corporate Center Way also escaped without injury, though it could have been different if the car had hit somewhere else, she said.
“Thank goodness he didn’t hit the structural beam,” Lopez-Belio said of the driver. “Number one, it would have killed the kids. Number two, the second floor could have caved in. It’s just a miracle that no one was hurt.”
In the aftermath of the accident, which Lopez-Belio said occurred after the driver was fleeing from another accident outside a nearby McDonald’s, bystanders and construction workers immediately jumped into action. They helped comfort workers, clear debris and seal the building.
An off-duty police officer from Broward County also assisted, Lopez-Belio said, and helped keep the boys from leaving the scene.
“He was talking to them,” Lopez-Bellio said. “I was just in a total daze.”
The Palm Beach County Sheriff ’s Office is working to complete an accident report, spokesperson Teri Barbera said.
Nearly a week after the accident, the office remains closed. Damage is extensive, Lopez-Belio said, and it could be months before the office is rebuilt. New equipment also needs to be ordered, including a state-ofthe-art laser that was destroyed in the crash.
For now, Lopez-Belio is working toward reopening a portion of the office — maybe next week — for hygiene patients. But if her sterilization room has to be closed off, that won’t be possible. If needed, she’ll move to a temporary location.
Lopez-Belio and her staff also are working to contact patients to let them know about the incident.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think a car would come crashing through a wall,” she said. “It’s not a street. It’s a parking lot.”