State-Journal.com - Emily Gable charged with felony

Photo By Ginger Lopez

Emily Gable, right, got checked out by a Frankfort Fire and EMS worker after she drove her silver late model Mercedes sedan into Kroger in Brighton Park Friday afternoon.

Willetta Hawkins, 72, got checked by Frankfort Fire and EMS personnel. She said she saw the Mercedes sedan drive into Kroger. She was in a checkout lane when she heard the car drive through two sets of doors. She said she then looked at the cashier and yelled “run.” “He ran one way, and I ran the other. I never moved so fast in my life,” Hawkins said.

Emily T. Gable, who crashed her car into Kroger in Brighton Park Friday afternoon, barely missing several people, has been charged with a felony for endangering their lives.

Gable, 74, of 1715 Stonehaven, wife of prominent statewide Republican Robert Gable, was arrested by Frankfort Police on charges of first-degree wanton endangerment and DUI. A preliminary breathalyzer test said her blood alcohol content was 0.094, just over the limit of 0.08.

Gable was released from the Franklin County Regional Jail sometime Friday evening, according to a jail spokesman Saturday afternoon.

The penalty for a first-degree wanton endangerment conviction is one to five years in jail.
At 3:10 p.m. Emily Gable's 2003 Mercedes hit an unoccupied car in the fire lane in front of Kroger, struck the front doors of the supermarket, turned right and passed through another set of doors, the arrest report says.

Then Gable's car struck several checkout lanes before stopping in front of the service desk in the middle of the store, the police report says. It did not estimate the speed of her car at the time of the crash. The limit in the area is 15 mph.

Gable had "bloodshot, glassy eyes and slurred speech," the arrest report says. It says she told officers "she had a shot of vodka with her lunch."

Gable and Craig B. Allan, 51, of 5134 Georgetown Road, the owner of the car hit in front of the store, were checked by Frankfort emergency medical services personnel and both refused medical treatment, the police report says.

Allan, a State Journal newspaper deliveryman, had stopped his car in front of the supermarket and got out to buy a grape soft drink from a vending machine, he said. He was about to get back in his car when it was hit toward the back of the driver's side, he said.

He said he thought at first he was going to get run over.

Allan said he went later Friday to the Frankfort Regional Medical Center where he was treated for a bruised chest. He said he was given pain medication, which helped him sleep Friday night.
A witness to the crash, Kroger customer Willetta Hawkins, of Iroquois Trail, said Saturday she didn't sleep well Friday.

"It was like a rerun (of the crash scene)," said Hawkins, who returned Saturday to buy groceries at the east Frankfort Kroger store.

Hawkins' groceries were being checked by a cashier when Gable's car crashed into the store, shattering glass.

"I was standing there writing my check," Hawkins recalled on Friday. "I screamed and said, "Get out of the way, run.' The cashier ran one way and I ran backwards. And about that time she (Gable) hit the checkout counter where we had been, and my groceries went everywhere."

After Gable's car hit the checkout counter, Hawkins said, "she veered over the other way and finally got her car stopped. You could hear her brakes screeching. She was trying her best to stop the car.

"I don't know what happened. But it's frightening to be checking your groceries out and look up and see an automobile coming toward you. It's a very disturbing thing. That young cashier (she didn't know his name and Kroger management wouldn't release it) was so sweet to me. We hugged each other afterwards and cried. We were so glad to be alive."

She said one woman was standing in line behind her and ran backward to safety, too.

"The store wasn't awfully crowded," Hawkins said. "There weren't many people checking out, thank heavens."

Grocery shopping will never be the same, Hawkins said.

"I don't think I'll stand close to the doors anymore," she said.

The Gables did not return a phone message from The State Journal Saturday.

Robert Gable was the Republican nominee for governor in 1975, losing to the incumbent, Democrat Julian Carroll. In 1995 Gable again sought the governor's office and lost in the Republican primary to Larry Forgy.