Two people have allegedly been smashed into, and massive property damage has been caused, after an SUV crashed into the front of an arcade in New Orleans. This comes only a month after the same arcade was terrorised by a man wielding an axe, who caused an estimated $50,000 of damages.
According to a post on Sea Cave Arcade’s Facebook page, the crash occurred at around 8pm on 12 January. Reportedly, the SUV was a stolen vehicle, and was piloted by a group of teenagers. The owner of the arcade, Judah Lea, and another member of staff, who for the sake of privacy is being referred to as “Goat”, were both struck by the vehicle. Goat was pushed through the wall, and is currently hospitalised from his injuries.
Apparently, the driver of the SUV jumped out of the vehicle and left it in drive, with the other passengers still inside, in order to flee the police who were in pursuit.
The owner of the arcade has clarified that this tragedy is “completely unrelated” to the axe incident that took place in December last year. At that time, a customer who went by the name “Wolf” had trapped employees and customers inside the building, while he smashed the windows. He left the scene before the police arrived, but later returned in the early hours of the morning with an axe, proceeding to smash basically every surface, including vintage arcade machines, televisions, and monitors.
“This ain’t the end for us, we will be back again, Goat will be back, and we [are] hell bent once again on making sure that everything is not only ok, but better, because honestly we don’t know how else to come back from this,” Lea wrote on Facebook.
For now, the arcade is closed while repairs are made, and staff recover from the events that have taken place. Lea wrote that they plan on setting up fundraisers to help Goat make a full recovery from the tragedy: “He is a good man and he deserves better”.
Featured Image Credit: Ben Neale via Unsplash, Michael Förtsch via UnsplashTopics: no article matching, Retro Gaming