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The driver of an S.U.V. plowed through the glass front window of an Apple store in a suburb of Boston on Monday, killing one person and injuring more than a dozen others, the authorities said.
Timothy J. Cruz, the Plymouth County district attorney, said that 16 people were taken to hospitals after the driver crashed into the store in the Derby Street Shops, a shopping center in Hingham, Mass., which is about a 17-mile drive southeast of Boston.
Speaking at a news conference, Mr. Cruz did not say what caused the driver to smash into the store or how fast the vehicle was going when it crashed through the front of the shop, punching a giant hole in the glass.
Steve Murphy, the Hingham fire chief, said that the authorities received multiple 911 calls at about 10:45 a.m. Firefighters and police officers arrived to find injured people in front of the store as well as a few people who were pinned against a wall by the vehicle, he said.
Dr. Christopher Burns, chief of trauma at South Shore Hospital in Weymouth, Mass., said there were “multiple patients with life-threatening and limb-threatening injuries.”
The hospital received a total of 17 patients after one additional person walked in for treatment.
Another doctor at South Shore Hospital, Dr. William Tollefsen, said that emergency responders used a restaurant at the shopping center to triage patients and get them out of the cold. He said the injuries included serious head trauma and mangled limbs.
Apple said in a statement that was it was devastated by the crash and “the tragic loss of a professional who was on site supporting recent construction at the store.”
“Our hearts go out to our team members and customers who were injured and all of those who were affected by this terrible incident,” the company said. “We are doing everything we can to support our team members and customers at this very difficult time.”
Mr. Cruz said that the authorities were conducting a criminal investigation and that the driver, who was not taken to a hospital, was with police officers.
He said he did not know how many people were inside the store when the crash occurred but he noted that it happened as many people were preparing for Thanksgiving, traditionally the kickoff of the busy holiday shopping season.
“It’s absolutely unthinkable; it’s absolutely tragic,” Mr. Cruz said. “And we’re going to make sure that, like I said, we’re going to go slow and steady with this and get the information as we get it.”
One woman told WBZ, a local television station, that she was next to the window in a Barnes & Noble bookstore when she heard a “big crash” and a sound like “a lot of glass smashing.”
“It was scary because no one knew what had just happened and what was going on,” she told the station. “There were a lot of people running around.”
