A MARKS and Spencer employee escaped with bruising and shock after being pinned against a till when an elderly man lost control of his mobility scooter.

The elderly man is said to have crashed the powerful scooter into one till, pushing two more tills out the way and cutting the electric cable to one of them, before wedging the female till assistant between the till and the wall behind her.

The incident, which happened on Saturday at the M&S Simply Food Store in Christchurch High Street, knocked out all three of the express lane tills for two hours over a busy lunch period.

Duty manager Perez Kaper said: “They are really heavy tills. We struggle to move them so he must have hit them with some impact to do the damage he did.

“Fortunately our cashier escaped with bruising and a bit of shock but we didn’t have to call an ambulance or administer any first aid.

“It could have been a lot worse and we are thankful it wasn’t any more serious.”

The employee returned to work on Monday.

Mr Kaper said the man often shops in the store and has been known to knock into other customers in the past.

He said: “We are aware that our aisles may be narrower than other stores and to prevent this happening again, we will be aiming to manage similar customers better when they visit us.

“This was a particularly powerful scooter and while we would not prevent scooters coming into the store, we would urge users to take care where and when there are lots of other people around.

“We apologise to our customers for any delays or inconvenience this incident may have caused them.”