Greenport Pastor: Church Will Be 'Open for Business as Usual'

By 11 a.m. on Wednesday,Pastor Thomas LaMothe was already having a long day.

The pastor had been dealing for hours with construction crews, the village building inspector, insurance agents, and journalists because the night before, a into the northwest side of the building with a pickup truck— leaving a gaping hole in the historic 1831 building.

LaMothe, pastor at the church for 15 years, said that he heard the truck hit shortly before midnight on Tuesday from his home located right next to the church to the north — and he thought an air conditioner had fallen out of a window.

“All I heard was metal on concrete,” LaMothe said Wednesday morning. “My daughter ran out of the house to see what was going on — we have had our share of drunk drivers running into trees.”

Jose Carlos Flores-Campos, 23, of Greenport was not drunk but he lost control of the 1999 Dodge truck belonging to Chris Mohr Landscaping of Cutchogue, according to police. and unauthorized and unlicensed use of a motor vehicle at 11:43 p.m. Tuesday night. Police said that Flores-Campos had fled the scene on foot and was located a few hours later. No one was injured in the crash.

At the time of the accident, LaMothe said that his daughter called the police and that he wandered out as well to see what had happened. It took him a while to realize that there was a truck sticking out of the side of the church.

“All I saw was that part of the fence was down — the hedges block the street lights,” he said, adding that once the police arrived their lights revealed the truck jutting from the church. “This was not good.”

LaMothe had the village cut electricity to the church due to fire hazard concerns, but the truck did not cut into any of the building’s water mains. The building inspector reassured the pastor that the building was structurally sound.

So no worries, LaMothe said — there will be church at the First Baptist this coming Sunday.

“We’ll probably have power hooked up by tonight,” he said. “We’ll be open for business as usual.”