Wal-Mart Worker Trampled by Black Friday Crowd

[viscus]

So how many people did you kill today for your OMG I GOTTA HAVE IT CRAZY HOLIDAY BARGAINS!!!?

Originally Posted by New York Times

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.

Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared. Someone taped up a crude poster: “Blitz Line Starts Here.”

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

Some workers who saw what was happening fought their way through the surge to get to Mr. Damour, but he had been fatally injured, the police said. Emergency workers tried to revive Mr. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holiday season, at the scene, but he was pronounced dead an hour later at Franklin Hospital Medical Center in Valley Stream.

Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.

Full Article

I am really, really repulsed by this. Are people really that desperate to get their holiday shopping done?

My distaste for Christmas seems to grow more every year.

[Albert Mond]

God. Fucking retards. I remember an article from not too long ago where a school was giving away free lap-tops to parents/students. People beat the shit out of eachother to get them.

[HumanePain]

If only the money spent on Christmas gifts went to feed the world's starving children. (sigh)

[Pantherlette086]

That's pathetic. I never shop on Black Friday and I hate Wal-Mart.

[Eclipsing the Son]

Arrest the entire first line of the mob. Compare receipts to faces then turn to video surveillance recordings. Charge every one of them with manslaughter.

[Utho]

I´d love to see all of them stampeders in a cozy little research-institution.
They´d make a good study, and they would be some interesting indicatives for the social environment that shaped their personalities.

[Godslayer Jillian]

Originally Posted by Eclipsing the Son

Arrest the entire first line of the mob.

This brings up an issue I talked with Ophelia a little back ago.
Generalizing, none of these people would have cared either way. The fact that he was trampled was not so much due to coldness from the front line, but because of the bulk in the back pushing forward.
So those that technically murdered the employee wouldn't have been able to do it were it not for the apathetic, consumerist attitude that pushed from behind.
Switch the front half with the back half and the same thing would have happened. So do they all deserve some form of judgment, or only those that happened quite arbitrarily to be those who killed him? It was the collective consumerist attitude that killed him.

[AshtrayKitten]

"Each snowflake in an avalanche pleads not guilty." -Stanislaw J. Lec

Accidents happen.

[Godslayer Jillian]

This is more than just an accident. This always happens; seriously.
I like the quote, but it has to be interpreted the other way.

[MegearaErotica]

This is why I don't go shopping on Black Friday. I always spend the day putting up the old artificial christmas tree with my mom.

[HumanePain]

Wal-Mart is just as liable as they didn't put much effort into crowd control, they expected the crowd to control themselves.

Jillian is right: the crowd in back pushes forward, unaware that they are killing the people in front. The same thing happened in August 2004 when ELEVEN people were trampled to death at The Who concert in Cincinnati.

A people routing system similar to how cattle are squeezed from herd to single line slaughtering would work to prevent trampled people as it does to prevent trampled beef, despite the ironic similarities.

[gothicusmaximus]

I must build a fortress to protect myself from these people.

[Renatus]

Originally Posted by HumanePain

Wal-Mart is just as liable as they didn't put much effort into crowd control, they expected the crowd to control themselves.

Jillian is right: the crowd in back pushes forward, unaware that they are killing the people in front. The same thing happened in August 2004 when ELEVEN people were trampled to death at The Who concert in Cincinnati.

A people routing system similar to how cattle are squeezed from herd to single line slaughtering would work to prevent trampled people as it does to prevent trampled beef, despite the ironic similarities.

I think it's also the same way Native Americans used to kill buffalo, they scared them in the direction of a cliff and by the time the buffalo realized they had to stop, the buffalo behind them pushed them in.

[Becca_Lugosi]

I would sue the fucking piss out of Wal*Mart.



~B.L.

[JCC]

Originally Posted by Becca_Lugosi

I would sue the fucking piss out of Wal*Mart.



~B.L.

And say what?

"I want money from you, you didn't have an indestructible forcefield outside your store!"

They SMASHED the doors down.

[Becca_Lugosi]

And the police were where?

People die shopping on Black Friday EVERY year. They should have been better prepared. They'll never be able to pinpoint all the people who actually killed the person. There should have been some measure of crowd control. Of course people can't control themselves, part of the human plague.



~B.L.

[JCC]

Some measure of crowd control? Can you imagine how much we'd all be bitching if there was a police barricade at Wal-Mart instead?

[Becca_Lugosi]

It would have been much more maddening if there had been.

People are/will always be looking for someone to blame.
And I, for one, blame Wal*Mart since there is no specific person to throw blame at.


~B.L.

[Jonathan]

I'm becoming increasingly disgusted with humanity over time.

The fact that this happened without any sort of malice makes it even more disconcerting. Just base greed, over acquiring cheap plastic shit, and an unwillingness to be cool and wait their turn at the trough got some poor guy killed.

[Saya]

Black Friday is when American stores start their holiday sales, right?

The only logical thing to do is don't do that. I've heard of this happening a few times before, yeah it must be great for sales but jesus no one needs to die. Don't have a specific day for when everything goes on sale, just introduce holiday pricing slowly over time.

[jack_the_knife]

I seriously don't really know what to make of this. I'm quite disgusted that something like this was allowed to happen, someone must have seen him on the floor and at least tried to get him back on his feet. I think that If something like this happens next Black Friday then Wal*Mart as a corporation need to be shut down due to endangerment of customers.

[Jonathan]

I can easily see how it would be difficult to help someone up - the example cited above concerning the buffalo hunt was frighteningly appropriate. There is this massive press of a bewildered herd crushing in.

What I have a hard time understanding is the "why" this happened. I could understand it if these were starving people trying to get emergency relief supplies or food. These guys were not after anything necessary for survival, they are looking for cheap plastic shit and electronic gadgets. And now, because of their greed, some poor slob who wasn't even a full time employee with medical benefits or much beyond a slightly better than minimum hourly wage is dead. Dead, in a fucking Wal-Mart.

[viscus]

Say what you want about mob mentality, but the blame for this is fixed squarely on the crowd. As much ire as I have for Wal-Mart as a company, this was not their fault. Perhaps it would've been best for the police to disperse the crowd when they first started to get unruly at around 3:30 AM, but then maybe that would've started a riot. Either way, what happened was still the crowd's fault.

I'm inclined to agree with Saya, retailers should just do away with Black Friday sales altogether. Because people have shown that they can't be trusted with the knowledge that they can save a few bucks on a DVD player at every store on a given day.

As someone remarked on another forum: how many years before people just start showing up to major retailers at midnight, breaking in and just looting them?

[AshtrayKitten]

A free society functions around the assumption that people are smart enough not to do these things. Introducing totalitarian solutions punishes parties who are only guilty of living alongside the walking trash that comprised the crowd.

The proper way to solve the equation is to get rid of the entire mob. Natural selection, in its infinite wisdom, would have removed some of the participants from the game of life if their numbers were large enough.

Also, anyone frothing at the mouth and prepared to demand retribution should keep in mind that his or her feeling of disgust could be nowhere near the level of guilt someone who stepped on someone else could be feeling.

[Despanan]

Man, that's like a freaking zombie movie.