Trash truck crashes into Billybob's

A truck plowed into Billybob's Saturday morning, damaging a wall of the restaurant at 40th and Spruce streets and leaving a mangled car in its wake. Although a few customers were in the restaurant at the time of the accident at about 7:30 a.m., no one was injured, according to University Police. The truck, which had been backed into the Allegro Pizza parking lot, first crushed a parked car on the 40th Street side of Billybob's. It then continued, charging into the wall the restaurant, according to Billybob's manager Jon Kelley. "The good thing about [the crash] was that nobody got hurt," he said. "I'm just glad that nobody was walking on the pavement. They would have been killed, no questions asked." An employee at AAA Recycling Corporation, the company whose truck ran into Billybob's, said in the police report that a pen got stuck under the gas pedal and the pedal stuck, causing the truck to crash into the restaurant. The employee said that the incident was a "freak" occurrence. He was relieved that a car had blocked the truck's path -- thereby protecting the two Billybob's customers eating on the other side of the wall. At the time of the crash, College senior Michael Lascher was eating breakfast at Billybob's, anxiously awaiting the Law School Admissions Test he would take later that day. "I was just sitting, eating an egg and cheese, and then all of the sudden a garbage truck came through the window," he said. Lascher said that the front end of the truck broke the glass of Billybob's window, causing a great scare to the five or six customers in the restaurant. "Everybody sitting near the windows was running around," he said. "It was pretty scary. You couldn't tell if the truck was going to stop." He said the window shattered completely, sending glass all over the place. "I didn't want to think of what could have happened to me if I was sitting by the window," Lascher added. Lascher described the parked car that was crushed as being "sandwiched" between the wall and the truck. Kelley said that the car was completely destroyed. "It's an accordion now," he said. The inside wall has been caved in and the broken window is boarded up on the outside of the restaurant. Five booths were removed where the truck crashed through the window, Kelley said. Although Kelley could not estimate the cost of repairs to Billybob's, he said that "it was a nice amount of damage." "I was kind of shocked when I came around the corner [and saw the damage]," he said. Kelley added that a repair company will estimate the cost of the destruction today. He speculated that it would take a few weeks to repair the damage. Lascher said that the incident had no adverse effect on his ability to take the test on Saturday.

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