Black Friday's first death - Wal-Mart clerk dies as crowd rushes in
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27955316/

Pregnant woman also knocked down, might have had miscarriage

NEW YORK - A Wal-Mart worker has died after being trampled by a throng of unruly shoppers shortly after the Long Island store opened Friday, police said. Unconfirmed reports said a pregnant woman also miscarried as the crowd rushed in.

Nassau County police said the 34-year-old Wal-Mart worker was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead at about 6 a.m. ET, an hour after the store opened.

A police statement said a throng of shoppers "physically broke down the doors, knocking him to the ground." The exact cause of death "will be determined by the medical examiner's office," the police stated.

A co-worker said the clerk was "bum-rushed by 200 people," according to the New York Daily News. "They took the doors off the hinges," said Jimmy Overby. "He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too ... I literally had to fight people off my back."

Police added that "a 28-year-old pregnant female was also transported to an area hospital for observation."

Shopper Jessica Keyes told the Daily News that she saw the woman being knocked down near where the worker lay dying.

According to Keys, when paramedics arrived they told the woman that "there's nothing we can do. The baby is gone."

Other shoppers said people kept entering the story as emergency crews attended the woman and store clerk.

"They were working on him, but you could see he was dead," the Daily News quoted shopper Halcyon Alexander as saying. "People were still coming through."


"They're savages," shopper Kimberly Cribbs said of the crowd. "It's sad. It's terrible."

Police added that three other shoppers " suffered minor injuries and were transported to area hospitals."

Wal-Mart Stores Inc., in Bentonville, Ark., would not confirm the reports of a stampede during the day-after-Thanksgiving bargain hunting, but said a "medical emergency" caused them to close the store.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.

© 2008 MSNBC.com

There is absolutely nothing in Wal-Mart worth killing someone over even if they gave you the whole damn store. 2 people were also shot dead in a Toys R Us after a fight over a toy. Un****ingbelievable.

This is depressing. You would think that they would notice they were stepping on someone, don't you think? :shrug:

And people wonder why I despair for humanity.

If I had to bet, I would say a lot of the people that trampled the man DID notice...they just didn't care. It's that weird herd mentality coupled with that strange sense of entitlement and lack of personal responsibility that many people are subject to - "Okay, that guy fell down and I just stepped on his pancreas, but I really want to get that Wii for 99 bucks before they're gone, and anyway, someone else will pick him up, so it's okay if I just keep going. "

Multiply that by everyone demented enough to try to bust down the door of a Wal-Mart to get a Barbie on sale, and this is what we end up with.

I could never knowingly leave someone on the ground like that. It's just terrible.

Your comment reminded me of an excellent essay by Richard Mitchell, written back in 1980, about the deadly stampede at the Who concert & Mike Royko's column & reaction to it:

________________
The Royko Papers
(March 1980)

"When you talked us in your paper you called us barbarians. It is even
more rude than when you call us delinquents. You cant compare us to 50
years ago because we dont wear knickers' and deliver newspapers. All
you Old Farts are the same. At Cominsky Park we were just expressing
our feelings about disco, because disco sucks. If you write another
column like that you will have to answer to me in person."
---A letter to Mike Royko from a high school student

"I was struck by a manifest shallowness in the doer [Eichmann] that
made it impossible to trace the incontestable evil of his deeds to any
deeper level of roots or motives. The deeds were monstrous, but the
doer . . . was quite ordinary, commonplace, and neither demonic nor
monstrous. There was no sign in him of firm ideological convictions or
of specific evil motives, and the only notable characteristic one
could detect in his past behavior as well as in his behavior during
the trial and throughout the pre-trial police examination was
something entirely negative: it was not stupidity but thoughtlessness.
. . . Is wickedness, however we may define it, this being "determined
to prove a villain," not a necessary condition for evil-doing? Might
the problem of good and evil, our faculty for telling right from
wrong, be connected with our faculty of thought?"
---Hannah Arendt, in "The Life of the Mind"

MIKE ROYKO is a columnist at the Sun-Times of Chicago. His essays appear in many newspapers throughout the country, thank goodness, for he has the habit of clear language and thought. Mike Royko wrote a column about those eleven people who were trampled to death at a rock concert in Cincinnati. He suggested, by no means injudiciously, that "those who would climb over broken bodies to reach a seat in an auditorium could be called ‘the new barbarians'." That suggestion must have seemed less than humanistic and perhaps even somewhat un-self-esteem-enhancing to a certain Robert Maszak, a teacher of English at Bloom Township in Chicago Heights. Maszak, probably remembering his training in the teacher academy, seized for his students this marvelous opportunity for a relevant and experiential exercise in the integration of self-awareness aspects and the clarification of values. He had them all write letters telling Royko where to head in, and proving, since they could write, that some teenagers were not barbarians. In fact, they couldn't, and they are.

Royko, to be sure, had said nothing about teenagers--or about the worth of rock music, which was stridently championed in many of the letters. Maszak, however, may well be a member of the National Council of Teachers of Eglinsh, and thus both a proponent and a practitioner of holistic reading, in which the reader must scrupulously refuse to consider what the writer actually says, a mere aspect of writing.

Maszak may also be a holistic grader, for he was not reluctant to display the fruits of his teaching, which look like this:

"Dear Tenage hater

I was disapointed by what you writen on the Who concert. From what you said I can see you have know so called barbarism. You used some strong words in there with very little fact, you say everyone was numbed in the brain. I will say from concert experience maybe half or three forths were high on something or nether but I allso know that theres not one forth to half that weren't. You say everyone was pushing and throwing elbows, did you ever think that some of the thrown elbows were from people who didn't like getting pushed. You said something about when you were a kid, well times have change. . . ."

Yes. The times indeed have change. Well, let's try to be holistic. Let's ignore failures of technique and, as we were instructed in last month's quotation from ETS, concentrate on "what the student has accomplished rather than on what the student has failed to do or has done badly." Let's remember as well the aggrieved whimpers of the educationists who beseech us to believe that skill in writing is obviously, while useful, much less important than humanistic things like the encouragement of self-expression, the enhancement of self-esteem, and the clarification of values.

Now we can understand why Maszak was untroubled by such a piece of work. It is, in fact, a testimony to the triumph of educationism over education. That poor student, not a villain but a victim, has indeed expressed nothing more than himself. His esteem for that forlorn and meager self is firm and truculent. And his values are perfectly clear.

Perfectly clear, too, are the values of the few students who actually mentioned Royko's topic, the death of eleven people. One saw it as a perfectly expectable concomitant of everybody's inalienable right to have what he wants when he wants it. Here's his clarification of values:

"If there were someone yer looked up to and yer went to see them in person and thier were thousands of peopl just like you and wanted to see him up close would you fight yer way in?"

Another shows an even keener sense of values; he gives us the very numbers by which we can reconcile ourselves to death in Cincinnati: "People die every three second. What would you do if you paid $15 for a ticket?"

Eichmann must have said as much in the still watches of the night, if he ever did say anything to himself. Jews die anyway, don't they? And Eichmann had even more than fifteen dollars at stake.

You can be sure that the humanisticists in our schools will make a profit from that last letter. They will transform it into a "values clarification module": You have paid for a ticket to hear a concert by the Walking Dead, whom yer look up to. How cheap does it have to be for you to decide that getting to your seat just isn't worth the
hassle of trampling a few people to death, people who may in any case die every three second? The ensuing rap session will be quite long enough to provide yet another day's respite from the tedious and dehumanizing study of language and thought.

The children who wrote the Royko papers are juniors and seniors in high school. They are probably from sixteen to nineteen years old. They have spent eleven, twelve, or more, years in our "humanistic," "values-oriented," schools. What their teachers have praised as "creativity" looks remarkably like anarchic self-indulgence, which is what creativity must always be in the want of discipline and skill. Their much-encouraged "self-expression" cannot be distinguished from dissolute libertinism, a virulent form of self-expression where there is no self-knowledge. Their "enhanced self-esteem" has blossomed into an arrogant narcissism, a perversion of self-esteem where there is no idea of what is estimable.

Can we hope that Maszak's few students are unique, or at least unusual? We cannot. We know that there are millions, millions of children who have in effect been dehumanized by the "humanistic'' education that smugly dismisses the mastery of knowledge and skills and the discipline of the intellect as elitist adornments accessible, if they will have them, only to the few, and eagerly peddles to the many the mindless claptrap of environmental awareness and career orientation and ethnic sensitivity and doing your own thing and letting it all hang out.

Human beings only, of all living creatures, can know what Hannah Arendt has described as "the claim on our thinking attention that all events and facts make by virtue of their existence." She said of Eichmann "that he clearly knew of no such claim," although she does not say of him, as we might have to of Maszak's students, that even had he known of such a claim he would have proved incapable of paying
it thinking attention.

Thinking attention can be paid only in skillful language. And, for those who want to be humanistic, there is no more distinctly human attribute than the power of language and no more distinctly human accomplishment than thinking attention.

Go and learn those things, you humanism-mongers, before you presume to instruct our children in values. And do it fast. There isn't much time. We have read the Royko papers, and we know what you have been doing. We have seen the future that you have fashioned for us, and, in words that even your victims will understand, it sucks, humanisticists, and all the young farts are the same.

Cops hunt Wal-Mart shoppers after worker dies
 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/27955316/

Charges possible after Black Friday crowd tramples employee at N.Y. store

The Associated Press

NEW YORK - Police were reviewing video from surveillance cameras in an attempt to identify who trampled to death a Wal-Mart worker after a crowd of post-Thanksgiving shoppers burst through the doors at a suburban store and knocked him down.

Criminal charges were possible, but identifying individual shoppers in Friday's video may prove difficult, said Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, a Nassau County police spokesman.

Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man, and customers stepped over him and became irate when officials said the store was closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

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

Police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the Wal-Mart doors before its 5 a.m. opening at a mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked the employee, identified by police as Jdimytai Damour, 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," Fleming said. He described the scene as "utter chaos," and said the store didn't have enough security.

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help Damour were also getting trampled by the crowd, Fleming said. Shoppers stepped over the man on the ground and streamed into the store.

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

'Savages'
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.

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."

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. It said it tried to prepare for the crowd by adding staffers and outside security workers, putting up barricades and consulting police.


"Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred," senior Vice President Hank Mullany said in a statement. "Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those impacted."

A woman reported being trampled by overeager customers at a Wal-Mart opening Friday in Farmingdale, about 15 miles east of Valley Stream, Suffolk County police said. She suffered minor injuries, but finished shopping before filling the report, police said.

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.

Items on sale at the Valley Stream Wal-Mart 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.


© 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

Why can't they let 10 people in at a time, then wait 10 seconds, then another 10, and so on? This is disgusting and exactly why certain people hate Americans. Some have no value for human life.

SO if they could identify these scum, and thats being kind, that trampled this poor guy, what exactly could they be charged with?

Because...
 

stores simply don't care about the individuals who they may employ (that could become hurt) as much as they care about the $$$$ that the mob mentality carries through their doors.

I have never done the 'Black Friday' thing...In the past holiday shopping was done during the summer months to avoid exactly what has happened in this instance, people no longer care about humanity as much as they care about materalism and 'playing keep up with the Joneses'...F**kin' sick if ya ask me.



And nothing is more valuable than human life, take it from someone who knows due to the current past month... :sorry:

I live in NY and from what I'm hearing on the local news, the doors weren't even opened yet. The mob outside was banging on them and yelling to be let in. What some stores do is give out vouchers for the big sale items that they know people line up for. If they only have 20 LCD TV's the first 20 people on line who want the TV get a voucher. I think this would help eliminate a mad rush once the doors open. Then again if people are capable of trampling over someone, they would probably also have no problem beating the hell out of someone to take their voucher. The police should release the surveillance video so that everyone can see the animals who caused this mans death, and perhaps help identify some of them.

There aren't enough words to describe how senseless, sad, and pathetic this incident is. What makes it worse is, as someone posted, nothing in that store (or any store for that matter) is worth an innocent person losing their life. It just shows you what has taken over the world: greed, materialism, inhumanity, and absolute carelessness.

I feel so bad for that man and his family. I hope these people that obviously didn't care will be able to sleep contentedly with their new wii, HD TV, mp3, blah, whatever, whocares purchases...just so very sad. :distress:

According to the article they took the doors off the hinges and broke in. It's monstrous.

The Walmart and Toys R Us are horrific things. With the unemoplyoment rates skyrocketing , the list goes on for life becoming financially unmangeable---I fear soceity is on their way to becoming totally out of control.

It's good we have some good people left .

Cheerish your love ones everyday. I think the USA is on the way of getting even more violent. Very , very sad.

This corporation literally has billions of dollars. Do they mean to tell me that they had no crowd control measures in place at their stores on Black Friday?
Given that this sort of thing happens repeatedly at their stores year after year I can only think that they get some kind of twisted PR kick out of these sorts of incidents. They should have the bejeezus sued out of them over and over.
As for those who were in the crowd that ran over this poor guy, it would be hard to point the finger at who exactly would be at fault. If you've ever been in a crowd of people that start pushing (I've heard there were between 200 - 500 people) you know that you have little to no control over what was happening.
That being said, this video doesn't exactly reinforce my faith in human nature:

But, nico, monstrosity has not completely taken over the world, as evidenced by the fact that people -- like us ledgies -- are outraged & horrified. It may have a foothold, but so long as even a few are horrified by the horrific & saddened by the pathetic & angered by the foolish & the absurd, all is not lost. Consider Blanche Dubois' wonderful lines in "A Streetcar Named Desire" when speaks to her sister in Scene 4: "We are a long way from being made in God's image. But there's been some progress since then ... Don't--don't hang back with the brutes!"

Thank you for that, David. That was a great read. And rings very true.

How cheap does it have to be for you to decide that getting to your seat just isn't worth the hassle of trampling a few people to death, people who may in any case die every three second?

I can easily see the folks frothing at the mouth to get into that Wal-Mart writing those letters to Royko. Hell, perhaps one or two of them WERE ones that wrote to Royko.

I wanted to laugh at the grammar and spelling, but then I realized that it's just par for the course - anyone that could try to somehow justify trampling people to death over something so petty and ridiculous has got to be working with an IQ of about 4.

I think...
 

that "4" is giving people WAY TOO MUCH credit!!! I tend to think it's 0 x infinity squared x 3.14

On Nov.23rd I was scared of going into the local Best Buy (A mere 74 miles away from my residence) to purchase copies of Guns N' Roses "Chinese Democracy" because I knew of the possibility that lines would be long for those who THIRST for the electronics that were on sale - and the mob mentality to fight among one another for some petty cheap 'Made in China' product was strong since it is "Holiday Sales Season"...

Fortunately I was the second person into the store when it opened, I think only about 4 customers were at the door when it unlocked.

In a word, "disgusting".

I like to know what in the hill is wrong with people these days.stampeding over this poor guy for dam tv set or what ever is on sate.A persons life was wasted for this stupid bull crap.I hope the family sues the crap out of who ever is faultI hope .Wal-Mart will learn from this, they should get more security force at these times,maybe they should hire concert crowd control security. they will put this problem to rest.

I can't help but think the title you chose for this thread was odd, Brian - did you expect more to happen later that day? I hope not - and thank God it didn't. Tragic.

Yes...
 

I did expect more deaths, people don't care for one another anymore - it's all about 'keeping up with the Jones' and "look what I have...blahblahblah". My own #$%^& older brother from Nebraska asked me (When he attended Debbie's funeral - I would had preferred he stayed in NB and KEEP drinking himself into oblivion since that seems to be the thing he loves to brag about) "Well f**k man, how can you & Debbie make three times as much money as I do and you dont have anything? F**k our house is full of everything so when people visit they get to see what the f**k I bought and I hope it f**cking impresses them." That's easy, TRY PAYING GODDAMNED mounting medical bills and you will find out MATERIALISM doesn mean A DAMNED THING!!! (I am working to survive at this time, though I am NOT supposed to be physically TAXING myself anymore - but I dont see anyone HELPING me out or even ASKING if they could help, so I am left to fend for myself at this point of the game)



Unfortunately, I do care about people...(My greatest downfall is that I care TOO MUCH about people - I cry when I see those angel trees in stores, thinking about how some child will grow to wonder if the holidays are a time to give up hope)

Hell as I was driving home from work last night I saw something in my view that caught my attention, from a distance it appearred to be a house on fire. So here I am at 2am calling 911 and giving directions to a county dispatcher as I sit at the county intersection wondering if someone was in that house...and wondering did anyone else notice the bright glow that I saw from the highway and did they even care to see what was causing such a sight.

Like the grief counselor stated to me on Tuesday "You are more sensitive to things than most..."