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17 Oct 2014

The #waterstonestexan and other people stuck in shops

David Willis, the Texan tourist trapped in a London branch of Waterstones on Monday night, is the fifth reported case of a locked-in customer this year. Here are four other hapless souls.

Picture: David Wills (twitter.com/DWill_)

He walked into Waterstones an ordinary American tourist and emerged four hours later as a global celebrity.

David Willis, from Dallas, Texas, has emerged an unlikely star after being locked inside the London bookstore for nearly four hours on Monday evening. Now he’s been branded “The Waterstones One” and is being sought for interviews on both sides of the Atlantic.

It all started with this.

And ended with this.

Raj Patel

Last month homeless man Raj Patel, fell asleep in the bathroom of the Tate Britain. He woke up two hours later to find the gallery deserted and the premises in darkness. Wandering around the museum on his own he was finally let out by a night security guard. “It was just a bit eerie, being all alone,” he said afterwards.

The solitary sci-fi enthsiast

In August a customer became so immersed in a science-fiction collection in the back room of Paramount Books in Manchester that he didn’t hear the owner leave. He tried to escape through an upstairs fire exit, with police offering to call the fire brigade to help with the rescue. The owner finally returned an hour and a half later and he was safely released.

Karen McNeil

The 31-year-old had been trying on clothes with her daughter in a shopping centre in The Quiz, in Parkhead, Glasgow when the fire alarm went off. The pair came out to find the premises deserted, the barriers down and the shopping centre evacuated. Terrified and “shaking from head to toe” she tried tapping on the window to get the attention of those leaving.

Eventually she was rescued by a member of staff at a neighbouring store and given a free dress for the inconvenience.

The lonely law student

In January an unnamed 25-year-old law student was forced to call 999 after finding herself stranded inside Miss Selfridge in Manchester. She emerged from the changing rooms of the Market Street branch to find the store closed and the staff gone. She said: “I was knocking on the doors and then I went upstairs and knocked on all the doors up there and I was shouting: ‘Hello, is anybody there?'” While waiting for police she browsed clothes collections.

But the other stores could perhaps take inspiration from Waterstones, which seized on the mix-up as a chance for some good PR, tweeting the below earlier.