For the second time in a week, a vehicle has collided into a Buchanan building, this time causing minor injuries to a county employee.

On Thursday, Feb. 4, a 2004 Honda Civic driven by C.W. Garner of Tallapoosa ran into the Haralson County Commissioner’s Office.

According to the Buchanan Police incident report, Garner stated he pulled into the parking space when his foot slipped off the brake and pushed the accelerator pedal, causing him to strike the building and continue into the lobby. Garner declined medical treatment.

Haralson County Clerk Alison Palmer was working in an office inside the building when the accident occurred. She said she heard a “very loud, awful noise.”

“We couldn’t even comprehend what was happening. You couldn’t associate that noise with anything. It was scary. By that time, the glass started crashing and the metal from the doors was scraping along his car, and it shook the building.”

Haralson County employee Laura Owens was taken to Higgins General Hospital in Bremen. Owens was working in the lobby when the accident took place.

“She had some minor injuries; she’s okay, doing good,” Palmer said. “If she hadn’t of seen it and jumped up, she would have been injured much more. She kind of saw what was happening in that split second and shot up out of her chair. And it had broke the table she was working at, kind of knocked her back against the wall.”

In addition to knocking out the lobby windows, the car also hit the wall inside the lobby. Once the accident was over, Plamer said the entire vehicle was in the lobby.

Despite the debris left by the accident, the office stayed open Thursday. Palmer is waiting for a financial estimate of the damage.

This was the second such accident seen in the city last week, as on Monday, Feb. 1, a man drove a 1991 Ford Taurus through the front of the Dollar General.

“It’s a common occurrence, but the rate is unusual,” Haralson County Emergency Management Administration Director Micheal Parker said. “It occurs every few months.”

In other traffic news: A North Carolina man was killed during an car accident on I-20 west of Waco Road Thursday, Feb. 4.

The Georgia State Patrol accident report states that Troy Lee Sowells, 75, of Supply, N.C., was traveling west on I-20 near mile marker 8 at around 10:06 p.m. when his 2004 Chrysler left the north edge of the roadway, overturned and went down an embankment. Sowells was ejected during the accident. No passengers were listed on the report.