Car crashes into Tampa game store

TAMPA (FOX 13) - Surveillance cameras inside a Tampa video game store recorded the terrifying moments a speeding car careened through the business Friday, nearly hitting an employee.

Trakel James was just starting his work day at R.U. Game? on Fowler Avenue when a loud noise made him look up in time to see a car barreling toward him.

"The moment I heard the sound, I just kind of moved backwards," James said. "I wasn't scared it was  more that I was shocked and I'm more like, 'well how did that happen?'"

A witness told the store's owner, Shane Butcher, the vehicle was going about 35 miles an hour and blew through a stop sign. Butcher said he was told the driver never hit the break until the vehicle was already in the store.

"They took out half of our storefront entrance. It's bad," he said. "They drove all the way through the store, all the way to the back of the store."

Surveillance video shows James dodging the vehicle at the last second. Moments later, he went back to the car to help the driver.

"All she said was that she was that she was sorry and I was like, 'it's all good, it's all good, as long as someone's not hurt," James told FOX 13, adding he later watched the security camera footage and realized how lucky he was. "After you watch it from a different perspective, I could have been sandwiched and things could have been worse if I was on the other computer that was more on the far right. But lucky enough, I wasn't."

Butcher is now facing a long clean up in his store and a lot of uncertainty.

The building wasn't the only thing damaged; the car destroyed a lot of the items that were for sale.

"Luckily no one was hurt, but it's kind of detrimental because I'm a small business, I use funds from my business to pay for my daughter's school, I pay for bills," he said.

One of the business's managers immediately launched a Go Fund Me (https://www.gofundme.com/help-save-tampa-ru-game) page to help out his boss.