Veronica Munroe hadn't seen anything like it in her 25 years selling fruit on Dublin's Moore Street.
At lunchtime yesterday while she was serving a customer on the busy multi-cultural market street she watched with incredulity as a car careered down Henry Street, sending shoppers scrambling for cover.
By the time the dark grey Ford Escort crashed into a parked van outside Arnotts, 10 people, including a teenager and a man in his 80s, had been knocked down.
"I was just serving somebody and the next thing there was a car coming down very fast," said Veronica, wiping away her tears.
"He knocked one person down and then another two people and I just saw bodies all over the place. He wouldn't stop when he hit the first person. He just kept going." Veronica's fellow traders tried to calm her nerves, offering her paracetamol, tea and cigarettes.
But half an hour after the incident her hands were still shaking uncontrollably as she tried to serve customers.
Curious onlookers thronged the busy street yesterday afternoon as fleets of ambulances arrived to stretcher the casualties, three women and seven men, to the Mater Hospital.
People stood huddled in shop doorways reflecting on the incident, acutely conscious of security concerns worldwide following the recent anthrax scares and terrorist attacks on the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon.
It was shortly before 1 p.m. when the normal weekday bustle of Henry Street was interrupted. The car, driven by a failed asylum-seeker from Nigeria, turned off O'Connell Street onto the pedestrianised street.
Ms Patricia Thornton, a Dublin office worker who had been doing some lunchtime shopping, said the atmosphere had been happy and relaxed minutes before as children admired a mounted Garda patrol.
"I heard an awful noise and a car going at full speed," she said. "Someone screamed that a woman had been knocked down. I came to the door of the shop and a car whizzed by me.
"Across the road a man was knocked down. I could hear the car going over his body." Mr James Boylan, a security guard, had been standing at the entrance to the She ladies fashion shop, covering a colleague on his lunch break.
"It was like watching tenpin bowling," he said. "People were just jumping out of the way. I've never seen anything like it in my life. He just ploughed straight down the street." Mr Barry Doran, a security guard at the Electronics Boutique, watched the car progress down the street, travelling at speed he estimated to be up to 50 miles an hour.
"I just saw a sea of bodies flying up all over the place into the air. He didn't stop for anybody," he said.
The car crashed through a metal barrier erected outside Arnotts and struck the rear of a parked van belonging to two workers from SIAC Construction who were relaying paving stones.
Mr Bob Alcorn had been about to drop a stone slab into a slot when he heard the sound of an engine revving.
He said: "I looked up the street and the car was heading towards me very fast. I decided to get out of the way but I didn't know what way to go." Mr Alcorn ran to one side while the car struck a barrier which had been cordoning off the area he was paving. His colleague, Joe, who had just sat into the front of the van to eat his lunch, was uninjured. The force of the car pushed the van several metres down the street.
After the car came to a stand still, Mr Alcorn ran over to it. Angry onlookers had already crowded around the vehicle, he said. The man was arrested immediately and brought to Store Street Garda Station.
Ms Moe Reynolds from Victim Support joined ambulance personnel and garda∅ on the scene yesterday. "The bystanders are probably going to be quite traumatised," she said.
"The shock usually sets in about a week later. It's important for people to talk about it as soon as possible." Ms Reynolds said Victim Support volunteers were available to help people cope with the aftermath of crime
Victim Support's helpline number is 1850 661771.