Idiot Takes Out Storefront Trying To Kill Girlfriend in Columbia TN

Idiot Takes Out Storefront Trying To Kill Girlfriend in Columbia TN
COLUMBIA, Tenn. - It's an amazing story of survival and it was all caught on tape.

NewsChannel 5 obtained an exclusive copy of some of the most incredible surveillance video ever seen. It was taken last Friday when Columbia police said Eric Whitaker plowed his pick-up into the Columbia Market on Hampshire Pike. They said he was trying to rundown his ex-girlfriend.

The video showed he missef the woman, but the car actually collides with the store owner and clerk Surendra Patel. Patel was crushed under debris, but then somehow emerged and walks away.

Police said Whitaker then ran from the store and stole an SUV. He collided head on with a bread truck.

The entire event was caught on the store's high tech surveillance system and will now be used in the criminal case against Whitaker.

Whitaker was taken to Vanderbilt Medical Center and was listed in critical conditon. Patel suffered minor bumps and bruises, but is home recovering.

Police this weekend said the driver behind the wheel of that runaway pickup truck was Eric Whitaker, 40; they said the motive behind his off-road rant was to regain control over his 37-year-old girlfriend.

After crashing two times Friday morning, including right through the all-glass storefront of a busy service station, Eric Whitaker was flown by LifeFlight helicopter to Vanderbilt in Nashville, where he was in critical condition Friday night. A Whitaker family member said that the man's health is improving.

Columbia Police are branding this explosive incident a case of domestic violence, pure and simple.

And Whitaker's refusal to allow anything to come between him and his girlfriend, who'd dashed inside the mini-mart for help, is indicative of a classic domestic abuser, according to staff members at the YWCA of Nashville and middle Tennessee.

"They will do that anywhere, at any time," said Pamela Sessions, vice president of programs at the YW. "And nothing is going to stop them from doing that."

Sessions said while Whitaker's service station drive-through is an extreme case of violence, it is not surprising. Nor is it a shock at all that Whitaker had zero regard for the innocent civilians who, in his eyes, threatened to come between his lover and him.

"So, for people who are in the presence when this act occurs, they are at risk for being harmed as well," Sessions explained. "So, whether it's in the workplace, it's in a public parking lot, in the neighborhood, whoever is around that person is potentially at risk."