Tourist trapped in Trafalgar Square Waterstones for two hours

A tourist ended up being trapped in a London branch of the book chain Waterstones for more than two hours yesterday, after it closed while he was still inside. 

 

Staff did not realise that Texan tourist David Willis was stilll browsing books in the Trafalgar Square store on Thursday (October 16) when they shut up at the end of the day. 

 

He said he had been upstairs for 15 minutes, but when he came down just after 9pm all the lights were out and the doors were locked. 

 

Willis took to social media to alert people to his predicament. 

 

After an hour of being trapped, he posted a picture of his plight on Instagram:

 

 

He later followed this up with a plaintive tweet saying he had been stuck for two hours – and his message was retweeted more than 10,000 times:

 

 

Eventually, he was released:

 

 

Even Waterstones played along, tweeting that Willis was now “a free man”. 

 

 

A spokesman for the Metropolitan Police said they had been called at 21:35 “by a man claiming to be locked inside a shop”. 

 

"Officers attended and following the arrival of a keyholder the man left the building shortly after 11pm,” he added.