LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- From Muhammad Ali, to NBA stars, hundreds of people have sat in a west end barber's chair.

Now, Dontay Penny is picking up the pieces after a TARC bus slammed into his shop, Clippa City, on Sunday morning.

"Maybe like half of the bus ... front of the bus ... was inside," Penny said.

Penny has been a barber for approximately 25 years, and he has owned the shop on West Market Street for the past 12 years.

"I'm one of those people that any milestone I'm taking a picture," he said.

Renovating the space took more than a year, Penny said, because most of the labor was done by his family and his friends. He said it was a labor of love for his west end community.

"All I heard when we first moved here, was 'we needed the shop right here,'" Penny said. "You had to go over to Broadway to get a haircut, and this was easier for people to walk."

Though it took 578 days for Penny to renovate the shop, it only took a few minutes for the crash to tear it apart.

"Now you probably can touch the ceiling," Penny said. "We have a TV that was right there, and it is folded like somebody folded a letter."

The TARC driver and a passenger weren't seriously hurt in the crash, but were taken to the hospital. No one was inside the shop when it happened. Instead, Penny heard the news through a shocking phone call.

"It was like somebody kicked me in my stomach," he said. "The wind went out because I thought somebody was seriously hurt. Ya know, things can be replaced."

He said his shop was a place for the community to come together.

"NBA players like Derek Anderson," Penny said. "I cut Muhammad Ali."

He kept a wall of photos with past clients in Clippa City.

"That wall was right in the impact zone," Penny said. "I wasn't able to salvage nothing but maybe five to six pictures."

Though Penny is usually the one taking care of people, he said people have been looking for ways to support him during this rough time.

"My phone's been ringing off the hook," he said. "Everybody's lending a hand and asking me 'Do I need some help removing things from the shop?'"

Despite the destruction, he's determined to reopen.

"It's not an option," Penny said. "We are gonna rebuild. It's just a minor setback."

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