Damian Grujic was having a quiet night, finishing up his bartending shift at The Flats Eatery and Drink when he heard the car hit the restaurant.
“My first thought is that the roof is collapsing,” Grujic said in an interview on Tuesday outside the McOrmond Drive restaurant.
“I can see the corner [of the building] almost shaking a little bit. I look out the window and I see smoke and glass in the air drifting around.”
The crash happened around 8:30 p.m. CST on Aug. 2. Video from a restaurant surveillance camera shows a car nearly t-boning another vehicle driving past The Flats before it ploughs through the patio and crashes into the building.
A small group of customers on the other side of the patio weren’t injured. The 44-year-old driver was taken to hospital with non-life-threatening injuries and is now charged with refusing an impairment test, according to a Saskatoon police news release.
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Grujic said it could have been a lot worse. One of the patio customers had wandered away from the table just prior to the crash.
“He was over in this corner for a phone call or something, maybe not even five minutes before the incident,” Grujic said, adding that the patio had been packed for most of the weekend.
“Thank God it was a slow night. Thank God there was nobody in this corner. Because if there was, somebody could have been killed easily. It could have been a horrific scene.”
That wasn’t the only close call. Several propane tanks on the patio were empty at the time of the crash because a staff member had forgotten to refill them the day before, Grujic said.
The restaurant is open for business but the patio is closed for repairs. Glass panes need replacing and there is some damage to the building’s exterior.
Security video shows vehicle crashing into Saskatoon patio
Restaurant manager Sam Arora was done work for the day but returned to The Flats when staff texted him about the crash.
“The corner side of the patio door is broken and we have windows broken. Like the patio window is broken,” Arora said. “Besides that, the furniture is also broken and the heat lamp and stuff. So it’s a lot of damage, to be honest.”
Arora thanked his quick-thinking staff for helping customers and checking on the driver before police and paramedics arrived.
Saskatoon patio smashed up by driver who seemed impaired, police say
Officers who spoke with the driver “observed signs of impairment, including an empty bottle of alcohol inside the vehicle,” according to the Saskatoon police news release. He is charged with “refusal to comply with a demand” for refusing an impairment test in hospital.
Grujic, a former lifeguard, said he spoke to the driver immediately after the crash.
“I’m trying to call out to him, ‘Are you OK? Do you need an ambulance?'” Grujic said. “He kind of just looked up, gave me a slight thumbs up and then just continued kind of looking down on his phone or something.”
It’s the second such incident in Saskatoon in less than a week. On July 30, police charged a 36-year-old man with impaired driving after a vehicle crashed into a building in the 3900 block of 8th Street East.
In 2025, Saskatchewan RCMP responded to 113 serious and fatal collisions involving alcohol and/or drug impairment, according to a July 30 RCMP news release. This is the highest total in 10 years and does not include collisions that happened in areas covered by other police agencies, such as Saskatoon.
Also last year, RCMP handed out 2,270 licence suspensions and laid 1,650 criminal code charges for impaired driving, according to the news release.
