Owensboro Women Got Locked Inside a Department Store

Have you ever been locked inside a department store at closing time? Over the weekend it happened to Jamie Helm and Tina Clark at J.C. Penney in Evansville.

Jamie and Tina decided they needed some retail therapy so they masked up, drove to Evansville, and had some much needed fun. Little did they know that a normal shopping trip at Eastland Mall would become quite an adventure. A hilarious one at that!

Sometimes if I'm in my shopping bubble, I don't hear those pesky announcements letting me know that the store is about to close. Many times I hear it, and rush to get that one last item on my list. I've often wondered what it would be like to be left behind, but luckily it has never happened. If it happened to me, I would probably do what Jamie and Tina did. Here's their hilarious story of getting trapped inside of J.C. Penney on a Friday night.

"Well today is a day for the books!!! We just got locked inside J.C. Penny at Eastland Mall! Literally all doors locked. Everything... so, we had to wait to be let out.," Jamie shared on her Facebook Page.

She explained what happened, "I went to the juniors and Tina went to the kids department to look around. After a little time went by, I found Tina and I said gosh, if you want to avoid the virus just come shopping. She said, I know it’s like a ghost town. We hadn’t even seen a worker. So about 7:15ish we went to leave. We noticed people walking away because the door was locked. We pushed it. Locked!!! So we were like okay, whats next. We walked to the front of the store. Where you walk into the mall part of the store. That was closed. We were locked in. We were walking around hollering “hello” “hello” nothing!"

Jamie shared what happened next, "So I called the mall security, who called the main manager at J.C. Penny. The manager was on his way to let us out and told us he would be at the back door to let us out. So, we headed to the back door to wait, only to find two women standing at the door. I don’t know if they were coming back in or what. First set of doors were locked. So I’m not sure. Tina asked who are you? She said, I'm the closing manager. We were like, we were locked in. She said, we made an announcement. Ummm, not while we were in there! So finally at like 7:35 we got out!!"

I asked Jamie what she was thinking when she realized they were locked in, "It was sooo freaking funny. I mean I’m glad the main part of the mall was still open to call mall security. Because if not I guess I would have had to call 911?!?!" she laughed.

Then I asked how she thought that it could have happened, "With all the places having different closing times now because of the pandemic, I never thought they would close at 7PM. We were just worried about getting out!", she added.

What an adventure! Have you ever been locked inside of a store or restaurant after closing time? Share your story with us.

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