The Wal-Mart “Black Friday” trampling death, cont.

The below story from AP is more detailed and vivid than the Daily News article I posted this morning. Readers’ comments follow the article.

Wal-Mart Worker Trampled to Death
By COLLEEN LONG, AP

NEW YORK (Nov. 28)—A Wal-Mart worker was killed Friday when “out-of-control” shoppers desperate for bargains broke down the doors at a 5 a.m. sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

Within hours of the trampling death of a Wal-Mart employee, Valley Stream, N.Y., customers had lined up behind crime scene tape, waiting for the retailer to reopen.

At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, and the store in Valley Stream on Long Island closed for several hours before reopening.

Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store. When told to leave, they complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning.

Nassau police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the store doors at the mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked the man, identified by police as Jdimytai Damour of Queens, to the ground as he opened the doors, leaving a metal portion of the frame crumpled like an accordion.

“This crowd was out of control,” said Nassau police spokesman Lt. Michael Fleming. He described the scene as “utter chaos.”

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help Damour were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said.

Items on sale at the store included a Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as “The Incredible Hulk” for $9.

Damour, 34, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 6 a.m., police said. The exact cause of death has not been determined.

A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, where she and the baby were reported to be OK, said police Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

Police said criminal charges were possible in the case, but Fleming said it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers. Authorities were reviewing surveillance video.

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., based in Bentonville, Ark., called the incident a “tragic situation” and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

“The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority,” said Dan Fogleman, a company spokesman. “At this point, facts are still being assembled and we are working closely with the Nassau County Police as they investigate what occurred.”

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like “savages.”

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’” she said. “They kept shopping.”

Shoppers around the country line up early outside stores on the day after Thanksgiving in the annual bargain-hunting ritual known as Black Friday. It got that name because it has historically been the day when stores broke into profitability for the full year.

AP retail writers Anne D’Innocenzio and Mae Anderson and contributed to this report

—end of initial entry—

Van Wijk writes:

Black Friday indeed.

Joseph C. writes:

This give a whole new meaning to the term “Black Friday.”

LA writes:

The term Black Friday is explained here.

Mark A. writes:

Just as India’s Muslims are “in crisis” according to the media, so will be the “security situation” at local Wal-Marts. The media in the United States generally will not refer to a minority group as being “in crisis,” but rather will select an “effect” of minority behavior and discuss that “effect” as being “in crisis” in the abstract.

Thus, in every black neighborhood, the following have “security” crises:

• Stores

• Movie Theaters

• Malls

• Schools

Most importantly, these crises never have causes. They merely exist in the abstract. Thus, a black school is merely a “bad school.” It is not, of course, a school made bad by blacks. This would impose a causal relationship on the matter and thus must be rejected by the liberal mind. The liberal mind literally thinks by not thinking.

Clayton R., who sent the AP story, writes:

Halfway down this story of the Wal-Mart trampling, under the heading “Holiday Shopping Scenes,” there is a link to 500 pictures of shopping scenes around the country. White people are eerily rare in almost all of them. Why? Is it because all the pictures are from large, or relatively large, cities? I find these pictures highly disconcerting. What do you think?

Sage McLaughlin writes:

I noticed this line in the story you linked today:

Wal-Mart spokesman Dave Tovar called the incident a “tragic situation.”

Well, of course he did. Need I even bother to pint out how offensive it is to refer to the “situation” as a “tragic” one? My conversion to traditionalism came about in large part because I came to see the connection between the bloodless, amoral language of technocrats like the Wal-Mart spokesman, and the increasingly bloody savagery of society at large.

But I’m preaching to the choir while beating a dead horse while mangling metaphors.

Richard writes:

We had a similar incident in London last year.

Jonathan W. writes:

After Thanksgiving dinner yesterday, I had a discussion with my cousin about the piracy off the coast of Somalia. He mentioned that he had heard that the entire country is literally a war zone, and then said something like, “It’s really mind boggling that throughout the world, some areas are generally civilized places, while others with similar geographies are absolute chaos. What makes one different from the other?” It’s amazing how brainwashed modern day liberals are. Are people really unable to see that the race of the majority of a country’s inhabitants are what makes one country “different” from others, or are they just deluding themselves?

I’ve been to that mall in Valley Stream before, and it is a crime-ridden ghetto. I went to see a movie there, and was accosted by a young black male who called me a “nigger” and accused me of looking at him wrong. I knew as soon as I heard the news broadcast that this likely the work of mobs of blacks and Hispanics.

LA replies:

Did you try to draw your cousin out, did you ask him what he thinks makes one place different from another?

And what did you say?

Jonathan W. replies:

After he said that, I looked at him and said “I think we all know why.” He looked back at me and said incredulously, “Wait, do you really think that Somalia is a warzone because it’s black while America is mostly civilized because it’s white?” I responded “Absolutely, don’t you?” He then said that he thought Africa’s abject condition was due to poverty and a lack of opportunities (basically, the usual canned liberal responses). I asked then why he thought that majority black cities in the U.S. were also in similarly bad shape. He then said something like “Yeah, I don’t really know” and changed the subject.

I often end up giving up.

November 29

RB writes:

I just wanted to thank you for your report on this incident. When I first heard about it I was confused by it happening in Valley Stream which I had always thought of as White. But I couldn’t really picture a mob of white shoppers breaking through a gate and trampling someone to death; I suspected that there had to be a “minority” angle to the story. This was confirmed by your report. In addition to an “exchange of ideas and opinions” your blog often does the “job that the mainstream media won’t do” by reporting the complete news.

MG writes:

When the inevitable “ripped from the headlines” Law and Order episode about this incident airs, what color do you suppose the mob will be?

December 1

Stephen T. writes:

Somewhat overshadowed by the Wal-Mart trampling on Long Island is the story of the two men who shot each other to death in a kid-crowded Toys ‘R Us in Palm Springs on the day after Thanksgiving. I swear to you: As soon as I heard the bare details: (1) that two grown men were packing handguns while Christmas shopping in a toy store in the first place, and (2) that they engaged in a blazing shootout up and down the aisles to defend the honor of their respective girlfriends who had just got into a gang-related fistfight in the store … well, I just KNEW.

Before I even saw their names.

I am not psychic. The politically inconvenient truth is, some scenarios just have “mestizo Mexican” written all over them. There are really only a couple of cultures in the Western hemisphere where you could make a bet about this sort of thing happening and be pretty sure of collecting. Now, for the next wager: Anyone want to lay odds that at least one of them is in the country illegally (despite the fact that both have been arrested and jailed before—one for domestic violence: that would be giveaway number 3, by the way—but never deported)?

The Palm Springs Desert Sun:

“The gunmen who, authorities say, fatally shot each other following a dispute between the women they were each with, were identified as Alejandro Hernandez Moreno, 39, of Desert Hot Springs, and Juan Carlos Meza, 28, of Cathedral City.”

By the way, “Palm Springs Weekend” was the title of a 1963 movie starring Connie Stevens and Troy Donahue. The area has changed a bit since then.

Posted by Lawrence Auster at November 28, 2008 09:38 PM | Send