Crouch End crash: worker dived for her life as car smashed into shop

Shop worker says crash was “like a scene from The Matrix”
Renaz Ameen, 29, from Romford was working in the shop when the car hit it

A computer engineer today told how she narrowly escaped death when a car being pursued by police careered into the front of her shop “like a scene from The Matrix”.

Mother-of-two Renaz Ameen dived behind the counter as the black saloon shot onto the pavement at high speed, demolishing the storefront and showering her in broken glass.

She said: “I thought it was a bomb going off.”

Ms Ameen, 29, was alone inside Mr Dweeb, a computer and mobile phone repair shop in Crouch End run by her brother, where she has worked for two years. She was about to head out to the bank at about 10.20am yesterday when she realised she had left the keys in the back room.

She said: “I went back to get them and just as I was walking towards the front again I saw sheets of glass coming towards me.

“I couldn’t see the car. The glass was coming towards me in waves and it was all going in my face. It was like something out of The Matrix.

“It wasn’t stopping so I just dived over the counter, landed on some boxes and my head hit the wall.

“I hid behind some boxes because I thought it was a bomb. I didn’t know when it was going to stop.

“When it stopped and everyone ran in and got me out.. that’s when I saw the car. I was really shaky and crying.”

Ms Ameen, who lives in Romford, said: “I’ve got two kids and I just keep thinking I’m so thankful that I’m alive. If I hadn’t forgotten those keys I would have probably have been killed.”

Debris was strewn across the street after the car crashed into the shop Dominic Black
Dominic Black

As passers-by and shop workers raced inside to help, the driver of the car fled on foot. The Met said that a search of the vehicle, which had failed to stop for a police check in Muswell Hill, resulted in the discovery of a “large quantity” of suspected drugs.

Ms Ameen was taken to casualty at the Whittington Hospital where, to her horror, she was placed in a bed next to the suspect.

She said: “He was right next to me. I saw him with police officers. I asked a police officer and they said it was him. What do you do?

Emergency services at the scene in Crouch End Helen Wilkinson
Helen Wilkinson

“I said ‘can you move me to another room because I don’t want to look at him’. It was really scary.”

Jean Christophe, an actor whose flat is above the shop, was away in Spain when he heard about the crash. He tweeted a photograph of a pile of bricks where his front door once stood, with the caption: “So I go away for a quick holiday and this is what happens to my front door. Just like in a movie — luckily no one hurt.”

Resident Thomas Noble tweeted: “I leave polite, calm, quinoa-loving Crouch End for one morning and it turns into GTA: Vice City.”

A Met spokesman said: “The male driver was arrested a short time later on suspicion of drugs offences. He was taken to a north London police station where he remains in custody.

“A large quantity of what is believed to be drugs was recovered from the car.”

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