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Filipino woman spends 40 minutes locked inside Satwa store

DUBAI - A Filipino lady found herself locked inside the Union Cooperative Society in Satwa a little past midnight on Saturday.

She neither heard the shop's announcement that it was closing for the night nor the rattle of the trolleys being pushed away to the storeroom. Her being shut in finally turned out to be a mistake of her making.

Abdullah Ibrahim, a supervisor at the Union Cooperative Society, told Khaleej Times that the lady happened to be one of their regular customers. "She would often arrive late at the Cooperative and do some last-minute purchases. Our closing time is 12. The staff told me today that she arrived five minutes before midnight. We were just wondering why she did not hear our staff calling out to the customers that the store would be closing shortly. We do this in both English and Arabic," he said.

He added that the staff had also switched off the lights and locked the door after having double-checked whether there were still customers inside.

A completely baffled Nasser, a Filipino staff at the Cooperative, told Khaleej Times, "We are still trying to figure out why she wasn't aware that everyone had left already. Before closing, we would take the trolleys inside the store. The staff would usually shout if there were still customers inside the store. She definitely should have heard it. Maybe she was deep in thought at that time. Maybe she had a problem and was not really attentive to the time or the activity around her. We really don't know what happened. We later found out that she called the police and we were alerted immediately. By 12.40am, we returned to the store to open it."

Till 1am on Sunday, the police questioned the Filipino lady who was later identified as Susan. While this was happening, Khaleej Times managed to speak to her sister, Josie, on the mobile phone at 12.45am on Sunday.

Obviously tense and furious, Josie lashed out at Khaleej Times, "Who's this? What do you want? You can talk to me in Tagalog, English, Arabic, whatever!"

When informed that this reporter would like to get more details about the incident, she said, "It's a shame. What if it was your sister? I feel ... I don't feel like talking." She quickly hung up.

Embarrassed at the situation that her sister had put everyone through, Josie shielded Susan from the cameras, refusing to have her sister's photo taken while being interviewed by the police.

The Union Cooperative Society staff witnessed a lot of curious spectators outside the store to witness the drama as it unfolded. It left many of them wondering why the Filipino lady did not even notice that the dimly lit store was closed for the day.