It was just like a scene from a horror movie — floor tiles mysteriously breaking, earth shaking, frantic screams and a rush to the exit. That was the sequence of events at the FLOW store in Tropical Plaza, Half-Way-Tree, St Andrew, yesterday as fear gripped workers and customers in what could only be described as an eerie episode.

Though the morning started normally, with the traditional crush of shoppers packing the telecommunications store for Christmas Eve purchases, no one was prepared for what followed.

“I can’t tell you what happened. I know that we were inside, the place started to tremble… and then the tiles just started to lift and then the glass broke,” store owner Gina Crooks recalled yesterday afternoon.

“I’ve never seen it [before]; I’ve been on this plaza for 37 years and I’ve never seen this so I don’t know, I have no idea, I can’t explain this. Right now I’m just confused, I’m really confused… everything is just lifting,” Crooks continued.

According to an alleged eyewitness who requested anonymity, while the store shook, tiles mysteriously popped up from the floor.

“I just saw the tiles started to break up from the front then it just go straight through. My thinking is that it was an earthquake,” he told the Jamaica Observer while pointing to the broken tiles.

When asked to explain the broken shards of glass, he reasoned that it was caused by customers’ rush to the door, saying: “Cause the tile them pull up, when them try open the door it couldn’t open so easy, and I believe a so di glass break.”

Crooks remembered a mass exodus.

“Everybody just went for the hills,” she said as she laughed at the situation. “I never see people run like that from I born; they were just gone.

“I was in the bathroom and I felt it, and I just jumped up and ran because I thought this was an earthquake, and then I came outside and realised we’re the only ones shaking, nobody else is shaking, nobody else is suffering,” she said of the store located between Lee’s Fifth Avenue and the Huawei outlets on the plaza.

Meanwhile shoppers, after ascertaining what happened at the FLOW store, went about their business as usual in neighbouring stores.

FLOW workers gathered outside the store, some with expressions of confusion and fear plastered across their faces as they repeatedly tried to explain what happened to curious passers-by.

“I’m not going back inside there,” a woman sporting a FLOW blouse said adamantly to her co-workers as she shook her head while observing the damage.

Another clenching her handbag shouted to her male co-worker, who was on the inside, to take her keys when coming out as she, too, refused to re-enter the store, stating “mi nah go back”.

One woman, after hearing what happened, was spooked and darted away from the scene saying, “mek mi hurry up an move from yah so”.

Another passer-by video-taped and snapped photos of the damage, reasoning it was because of “evil spirits”.

“God save everybody weh deh in deh so dis morning, a dem fi go baptise,” she stated.

Crooks speculated that the damage was as a result of a broken water main beneath the store’s surface.

“I’m looking and I’m seeing water inside. I don’t know if it’s a water main that has broken underneath that the pressure has popped it up, I have no idea. And it continues to lift and break and lift and break, so I can’t explain it to you,” Crooks told the Sunday Observer.

“If you look back there at the tiles to the back there, you see water settling underneath the tiles, so I don’t know if it’s that a main has just exploded or what. The only thing I can say is that there is water coming up underneath the tiles so maybe it could be a water main or something, not sure,” she continued.

“This is God’s work, that’s all I can say.”

She noted that Christmas sales would have definitely been hampered.

“I saw Christmas today for the first time, so there went my Christmas,” Crooks told the Sunday Observer, highlighting that the store was “very full” prior to the event.

“Anyway, this is God’s work, man. You never know, [maybe] we’re not supposed to be here tonight, who knows,” she reasoned.

Crooks said that she had already called the relevant authorities to investigate the problem and move to quickly rectify the situation.

“I’ve called the plaza maintenance, I’ve called somebody to replace the door, and I’ve called the [National] Water Commission, but you know, we’ll see. It’s Christmas Eve; Getting somebody here from water commission is highly unlikely today,” she stated.

Noting she secured what she could, Crooks revealed that the “whole place is breaking up… even around the back”.