Fort Mill police found him locked in Walmart after hours. And was he glad to see them

Fort Mill police found something unusual when they responded to an alarm at the Walmart Neighborhood Market — someone inside, happy to see them.

“I was hoping the police would come by,” said Larry Todd, 79, who spent more than an hour trapped in the store July 20. “Finally the alarm went off. I guess I got somewhere I set it off.”

According to the police report, a call came in from a Walmart monitoring center, stating interior motion alarms had been activated after hours at the store on North Dobys Bridge Road.

When security checked cameras there, they saw a man walking around the store. Company security couldn’t tell, according to the report, whether the man was left locked in the store or had broken into it.

Police arrived at 2 a.m. Todd was standing in front of the double doors.

Police asked him if there was a lock on the door and Todd told them there wasn’t. The store manager arrived to let Todd out as police investigated to see if anything was stolen.

The company opted not to press charges as long as no merchandise was taken. Todd didn’t have any.

He told police that once he realized he was locked inside the store, he put the items he’d planned to purchase back in their original locations. Officers gave Todd a vehicle escort back home.

Todd said Thursday afternoon it all was a matter of bad timing.

“I’m doing fine,” he said. “I come in there pretty late, I guess later than I thought it was.”

Todd said he shops at the store all the time. He lives less than a mile from there. He was shopping in the dog section when he realized he was alone.

“They used to stay open all night, but now they close at 12 (a.m.),” he said.

Todd said he didn’t fall asleep in the store. He wasn’t in the bathroom. He said typically stores announce when they are about to close.

“I’m not saying they didn’t do that, but I didn’t hear it if they did,” Todd said. “By the time I got to the front, I was locked in the store.”

He said he had left his phone in the car and had no way of getting a hold of anyone. He hoped an alarm would set off without him having to damage anything. It took more than an hour.

“I just waited, hoping somebody would come,” Todd said.

The retiree, who moved to Fort Mill from Charlotte five years ago, said he should have come into the store earlier than he did. He doesn’t know why no one noticed him before locking up and leaving.

“This was kindly a bad situation,” Todd said. “I’ll make sure it never happens again, that’s for sure.”

A few days after the incident, Todd can laugh about it a little.

“It’s an unusual incident,” he said. “I’ve never had anything like that happen before.”

Since the store was closed by the time employees left, and by the time a manager and police arrived to let him out, Todd wasn’t able to purchase the items he’d arrived to get. He had to come back for them during normal business hours.

“I sure did,” Todd said. “I got up early the next morning and went in there, and got everything I wanted, and a little bit more.”

This story was originally published July 26, 2018 at 4:52 PM.