A late-night joyride through South Los Angeles ended in the sweetest kind of disaster Sunday, when a chain-reaction crash sent a sedan straight into the side of a beloved neighborhood donut shop that has been serving Angelenos since the Eisenhower administration.
The three-car pileup happened just before midnight at the corner of Normandie Avenue and West Century Boulevard in the Westmont area, where Kindle’s Donuts has been quietly minding its own business for decades. Witnesses told RMG News that a blue sedan blew through a red light and immediately collided with both a Tesla and a red Chevrolet Camaro. For the Camaro guys out there, yes, your car got hit by a sedan running a red light. No, this story does not get better for you.
Surveillance footage from the intersection appears to back up what witnesses described: the sedan sailed through the red, got tagged by the Tesla, bounced off the Camaro like a pinball, and came to its final resting place embedded in the side of Kindle’s Donuts. At that point the building had really done nothing wrong.
A Historic Doughnut Shop Takes One for the Team
Kindle’s is not just any donut shop. The building dates back to the 1950s and sports the same iconic giant rooftop donut that made Randy’s Donuts in Inglewood world-famous. That’s right, a piece of LA architectural history took a direct hit from a wayward blue sedan at 11:30 on a Sunday night. The side of the shop sustained significant damage, and somewhere a city historian is having a very bad Monday morning.
One person was transported by ambulance from the scene, though according to video from the scene, the patient appeared to be conscious and was already on their phone while being loaded in. So that’s either a great sign medically, or someone had a very important text to send.
Notably, all drivers involved stayed at the scene and no arrests were made, a California Highway Patrol spokesperson confirmed to KTLA. Investigators are still piecing together what caused the whole thing, and they haven’t ruled out the possibility that the sedan’s driver may have experienced a medical emergency behind the wheel.
For now, Kindle’s Donuts has survived recessions, pandemic shutdowns, and apparently a multi-car crash. If that’s not the most LA story of the week, it’s at least top three.