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Fourteen people were injured, four of them critically, Friday night when a vehicle crashed into a building in Arlington’s Courthouse area, police said.
The crash happened with a loud bang around 6:45 p.m. in the 2000 block of busy Wilson Boulevard as the vehicle drove through the front of a tavern, according to authorities and witnesses.
In addition to those seriously injured at the Four Courts Irish pub, four others were taken to hospitals with non-life threatening injuries, police said. Six other people were treated at the scene, according to police.
The crash caused a fire, which was extinguished. A video circulating on social media shows people rushing away as flames shoot out from the front of the pub, Ireland’s Four Courts.
About 30 people were inside the red-fronted pub, both patrons and staff members, when server Mary Riley heard what she described as a loud boom.
“We just heard this huge bang,” she said. She was in a part of the tavern away from the crash and did not see it. But she saw right after.
It included “dust and just debris,” she said.
When “pure panic broke out,” she said, people rushed to the back.
Everyone was shouting, “Get out, get out, get in the back, get in the back.”
Another witness to the immediate aftermath looks shaken.
“I’ve never seen anything like it,” said the man. “It was like carnage.”
Witnesses reported that a group of people at a table were among the most seriously injured. According to accounts of people at the scene of the accident, bystanders helped pull the injured out of the debris.
The cause of the crash could not be immediately determined. Police spokeswoman Ashley Savage did not release details. However, she said the driver was one of those taken to hospital. The type of vehicle was not disclosed. He appears to have remained in the building on Friday night.
Nancy Donnella, who said she co-owns the building where the crash happened, said she was told by police and others at the scene that the crash happened head-on.
The building is at the intersection of Wilson Boulevard and Courthouse Road; The courthouse crosses Wilson at right angles. Donella said she was told the vehicle was apparently northbound on Courthouse and “just ran right into it.”
This account could not be independently confirmed by the police.
Savage said the building remains structurally sound. However, it was not clear when it would reopen.
Wilson Boulevard is a major east-west thoroughfare in Arlington and is lined with high-rise office buildings and is a major hub for nightlife, with many restaurants and taverns.
In a similar incident earlier this year in the county, two women were killed and at least nine other people were injured when the driver of a small SUV plowed into diners outside a restaurant along Connecticut Avenue NW at lunchtime, according to police and officials the fire department.
This developing story has been updated.
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