Elderly woman hits gas instead of the brake before smashing into Peru building

Caution tape and barricades remain up outside a downtown Peru building after an SUV drove into it Wednesday afternoon.

Seventy-eight-year-old Socorro Barnes of Spring Valley says as she was trying to park on 4th Street, or Route 6 she hit the gas instead of the brake. That mistake took her Kia Soul into the office building. The gaping hole in the building has since been boarded up.

Barnes was taken to St. Margaret’s Hospital in Spring Valley. She wasn’t ticketed.