As they were placing their orders at the D.C. restaurant, a sport-utility vehicle darted across Connecticut Avenue at full speed, jumped the curb and slammed into a cluster of sidewalk tables filled with diners.
Bloom, 76, was killed, as was another woman, Terese Dudnick Taffer, 73, police said Saturday. Taffer was also involved in the local art scene, though it could not be confirmed whether they were at the same table. Bloom and Taffer both lived about two miles south, in the Cleveland Park neighborhood.
Witnesses described a horrific scene in which one second everyone was enjoying lunch on one of the first warm days of the waning winter, and the next, the SUV barreled onto the sidewalk at 5510 Connecticut Ave NW. Diners seated on the left side of the door were untouched; those on the right were in its direct path.
On Saturday morning, owner Pete Gouskos, who opened the Parthenon 33 years ago, was still stunned by the randomness of the tragedy. One of his waiters was taking an order facing the street and saw the SUV with the split second he needed to jump back. If he had been facing the other way, he would have been directly hit, Gouskos said. The entire table was.
“One minute you’re here; the next minute, gone,” he said. He said he was doing all right, but as his daughter, Stephanie, talked about the family business he built into a staple of the Chevy Chase neighborhood, her father teared up. Looking outside at snow on the ground, he said he wished the weather on Friday had been like that.
Three others hit on the patio were in critical condition, and another three hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries. Three others were treated at the scene and did not require hospitalization, said D.C. fire spokeswoman Jennifer Donelan. Among those seriously injured was Shelton Zuckerman, a real estate developer and co-founder of Sixth & I synagogue in D.C., who remained at George Washington University Hospital on Saturday, said his wife, Rory Kirstein Zuckerman.
The name of the driver and his condition were not released. Duncan Bedlion, a D.C. police commander who runs the 2nd District station, described him as an older man who was alone in the vehicle. He was cooperating with investigators after the crash, and police do not believe his actions were intentional.
Crash investigators determined that, at 12:17 p.m., a gray 2008 Subaru Forester drove south at high speed through a parking lot in the 5500 block of Connecticut. The SUV exited the parking lot, veered south and then north, climbing over the curb outside the Parthenon.
Edward Levin, who was safely seated on the south side of the Parthenon patio, said he witnessed the event. The driver of the SUV was exiting an Exxon gas station across the street and darted across Connecticut and onto the sidewalk, he said.
“The whole thing took less than two seconds,” said Levin, who was having lunch with a friend. “It was like he was shot out of a cannon. If he had gone completely straight he would have gone into the front door, but he swerved to the right and just mowed down all the tables.”
Victims in crash outside Chevy Chase restaurant identified
