Staff at Lou’s Auto Body had to board up smashed glass on a door at the Inglewood shop after an intruder tried to get inside in broad daylight while the boss was away.
Owner Steven Dupont was on a flight coming back from Toronto Wednesday when he got a text from his assistant manager.
“He sends me a text saying, ‘I have a photo of the door,’ with a very vague caption of, ‘You’ll never guess.’ So I asked, and he was right. I would never guess what happened here that day,” Dupont said.
Assistant manager Jerry Phongsa saw what caused the damage first hand.
“Just shocked. It was a really loud thud. It was pretty amazing,” said Phongsa, who was sitting in his office when he looked up to the surveillance video and a saw a deer crashing into a glass door at the side of the building.
The deer hit with enough force to shatter the glass on the door. Witnesses said the animal immediately spun around and ran back to where it came from.
“It looked like it was coming pretty fast,” Phongsa said.
Lou’s Auto Body is just down the street from the Inglewood Bird Sanctuary, so that might explain where the deer came from, but not why it took a run at the door.
“They don’t have a drivers’ license so they weren’t here for an estimate,” Dupont said. “I’m not sure, maybe the reflection in the glass for the time of day.”
The shop has been in Calgary for 48 years. No one can recall a deer at the building, much less running into it. However, the shops gets at least one vehicle a week in for repairs that has hit a deer or other wildlife.
“We see them weekly. So it could be very startling and devastating to a person because it’s something they don’t know how to react to before they hit. And there are people who have a bit of guilt afterwards as well,” Dupont said.