Man gets trapped in bookstore, turns to social media

A man from Texas walked into a London bookstore just before it closed Thursday night. While he was browsing, the employees locked up the store and left, trapping him.

David Willis told ABC: "I thought to myself, it really looks like I'm locked in..."

So, after a while, he sought help through social media. Around 11 p.m., David Willis tweeted Waterstones bookstore: "I've been locked inside of your Trafalgar Square bookstore for 2 hours now. Please let me out."

That message ended up being retweeted more than 12,000 times.

Here's the problem: The Independent reported the social media team at Waterstones had logged off for the night and wasn't checking the store's Twitter account.

Eventually, Willis decided to call the police, who came and let him out.

Shortly after midnight, Waterstones tweeted Willis was "a free man once more."

Though many think when locked in a bookstore you should just pick up a book to pass the time, it sounds like Willis didn't go that route.

Willis told ABC: "I was too scared to even touch anything. I didn't want them to think that I had hid in the store."

As Waterstones told the BBC: "We're mortified that this has happened. This is not the sort of thing that we want to happen and obviously we'll investigate and deal with it."

Even though the incident is all said and done and Willis is safely on the outside, other Waterstones locations in the U.K. aren't letting the Trafalgar Square location off easy.

A staff member from the Picadilly bookstore jokingly tweeted, "So, man walks into a bookshop..." And an employee for the Covent Garden store tweeted, "Personally, I think bookshop lock-ins should become a thing. I would have made a book castle."

Book castles? We're totally down for that.

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