Alleged drunk driver barrels through Chevy’s, narrowly missing bystanders
BELLINGHAM, MASS. – A Bellingham man allegedly driving under the influence crashed through the parking lot in front of Chevy’s Ice Cream Parlor Sunday night, narrowly missing a nearby parked car with passengers inside.
The driver, Robert Marcoux, 38, was taken to the hospital for non-life threatening injuries. Chevy’s was not yet open for the season, and no one else was hurt.
Bellingham police responded to the call around 7:30 p.m. and found Marcoux in a Ford F350 in the Hilltop Farms lot, where he had come to a stop after veering off the road and cutting through the Chevy’s parking lot. Video captured by Chevy’s surveillance cameras shows Marcoux speeding northbound and crashing across a concrete barrier and the Chevy’s sign in front of the property.
He then sped between two parked cars in the Chevy’s lot, including one that had two adults and a child inside, according to Bellingham Police Lieutenant Stephen Daigle, and smashed through a chainlink fence. Bellingham police are still conducting an accident reconstruction and criminal investigation, but so far, they are citing Marcoux with operating under the influence, operating to endanger, marked lanes violation and speeding.
Shayna Murray, whose father owns Chevy’s and Pool Pro next door, cut the surveillance video together and posted it to the Chevy’s Facebook page. She told The Call & Times she had been going back and forth trying to open that weekend before deciding to wait another week, and now she keeps thinking about the “domino effect” that kept more people from being hurt or killed.
“It would’ve been such a catastrophe,” she said. “There’s no doubt in my mind that multiple people would’ve been killed if we’d been open.”
Earlier that day, Murray had hosted a training with this season’s employees, almost all of whom are local teenagers. They’d all already dispersed for the day, and Murray was coming back from running an
errand. She noticed a red SUV still parked in the lot on the Chevy’s side but didn’t think much of it at the time, she said. Later that evening, when she was home with her young daughter, she got a call from a friend at Hilltop and ran over from her nearby house.
“As soon as I came around the corner, I saw that same car,” she said, and realized it was the car that had almost been hit by Marcoux.
She spoke to the two women inside, one of whom was holding her infant child in the front seat.
“They were shaken up but I don’t think they understood the gravity,” she said. “When the dust settled, I went inside and pulled the security footage.
When I saw it happen, I was like ‘oh my god.’”
Marcoux’s truck comes so close to the red SUV that the surveillance video footage shows the two women flinching out of the way inside their car, Murray pointed out.
As she was cutting together the video from all of the different cameras around the property, Murray said she was also amazed that the incident happened when no other cars were pulling in or out of the lot, which video showed had been happening all day because people were checking to see if Chevy’s was open yet. She said there was “no other stitch of time” it could have happened when no one else was hurt.
“Every time you see a car pull in, you feel pride but you feel that sense of gratitude,” she said. “We are so happy to replace a sign. There’s nothing to be sorry about here.”
Murray said the incident, on top of the delays she was already working through, has set back the season a bit but she plans to open Chevy’s in a few days. Once it’s open, it stays open every day, including July 4, until Halloween.