Florida woman calls 911 after being locked inside CVS

ST. CLOUD, Fla. (UPI) -- A Florida woman said she was preparing to check out at her local CVS when she discovered she was alone and locked inside the store.

Christian Hathaway said the lights were on and the music was still playing inside the St. Cloud store about 9 p.m. when she headed toward checkout with her items and noticed she was alone and the doors were closed.

"I dropped all my stuff at the counter and ran running towards the door. I noticed the big steel door was coming down. There was probably three inches left, and I just started banging and screaming, 'Hello!'" Hathaway told WOFL-TV.

"I start banging on the door; that's when the alarm starting going off and that's when it really hit me, 'Nope you are locked in,'" Hathaway told WKMG-TV. I start screaming, 'Hello, hello, let me out! I'm in here.' Nobody answers.

Hathaway called 911.

"I was like, 'They couldn't have really locked me inside this building. There's gotta be someone inside the store.' But then I started yelling around the store and no one answered," she said.

An officer soon arrived at the store, but was unable to budge the steel gate.

"The guy gives me a call and says, 'I just want to let you know we are outside, but unfortunately, due to the metal storm doors, we can't get in to get you. We have contacted the store manager who is en route,'" Hathaway said.

She said the store manager arrived about 40 minutes later with the key to open the gate and the door.

Hathaway said the manager apologized.

"He did tell me that they didn't follow policy and that they were going to retrain all the closers on the proper way to close the store," Hathaway said.

She said the district manager called and offered her a $100 gift card as compensation.

"We are very sorry this incident occurred and we have attempted to reach Ms. Hathaway to apologize to her," said Mike DeAngelis, a CVS corporate spokesman. We are following up with the store team to ensure that our store closing procedures are followed properly in order to prevent something like this from happening again.