TUPELO, Miss. (WTVA) -- A Tupelo store owner is picking up the pieces of her business following an accident Saturday.
That's when a vehicle wound up flying into the front of McKinney's Unique Fashions on North Gloster Street.
Lola McKinney showed us Sunday the damage inside of her boutique.
She says a vehicle came crashing through the window Saturday afternoon, much to everyone's surprise.
No one inside the store was injured during the crash, but there was a very close call.
One of her store clerks, she says, was working in the store window right before the accident happened.
"A guy walked in and said, 'Do you have ties?' He walked from here and went around to where the ties were. And that's when everything [happened], he didn't know what was going on. He left out running."
McKinney was not present when the accident took place, but says when she returned the safety of her store clerk was her first concern.
Then she found out that an unknown customer quite possibly saved his life.
"Asking that question at that moment [caused the clerk to step away] from the window. There's so much debris and bricks .And the young man told me he didn't know what happened. All he knew is that when he moved out of the window and pointed towards the ties, he didn't know if it was an explosion or what," McKinney said.
Tupelo police say the driver of the vehicle was taken to the North Mississippi Medical Center alive. His condition was not known Sunday afternoon.
McKinney's is a complex of three businesses in one: the boutique, a beauty parlor and a barber shop.
For now, McKinney says she's not sure about reopening the boutique and adds that the beauty parlor received some damage as well.
The barber shop will remain open, she says.
McKinney says the business has suffered fire damage in the past but nothing like what she saw here Saturday.
"We've had a fire. That was devastating to me. But this, knowing that a life could have been lost...again, whoever the young man that came and asked to see some neck ties at McKinney's, thank you," McKinney said. "Thank you because I know that young man would have been standing there."
McKinney says two more vehicles besides the one involved in the accident were damaged in her parking lot as well.
