Florida woman trapped inside CVS while trying to buy birthday card
TITUSVILLE, Fla. (AP) – A woman trying to buy a birthday card called police when she was accidentally barricaded inside a CVS store in central Florida.
Lillian Rimmel stopped at a Titusville CVS at 9:50 p.m. Friday to make a quick purchase, unaware the store was about to close. As she walked toward the check out just after 10 p.m., she triggered a motion sensor alarm and found herself barricaded inside. A metal security gate blocked the front entrance as sirens blared.
“I started screaming, ‘Is anyone here? Can anyone help me?’” she said.
Florida Today reports Rimmell was worried someone would mistake her for a burglar, so she stood in front of a security camera and dialed police. They contacted the manager to come and let her out.
“I was just so nervous that I did something wrong. I didn’t know how this could happen. I was dumbfounded,” she said.
Rimmell says there was no announcement warning the store was closing.
She said she didn’t know how store employees could have missed her. She is 6-feet-tall and said she could look over all of the partitions.
“I can look over every one of the aisles, so I don’t know how they didn’t see me,” she told the newspaper. “No one said anything to me.”
Police responded to her 911 call and waited for the manager to arrive. They helped calm Rimmel down and said there was no wrongdoing by anyone.
A store manager said she couldn’t comment, but CVS spokesman Mike DeAngelis said in an email Monday that the company “sincerely apologizes” for the incident.
“We are reinforcing the correct store closing procedures with all of our stores to prevent this from occurring again,” DeAngelis said.