Dead on Black Friday at Walmart
This year’s Black Friday tragedy is a Walmart stampede which left a 34-year-old temp worker (Jdimytai Damour) dead and four shoppers (one eight months pregnant) injured. 2000 shopper stormed the Queens-area Walmart gates at 5 AM after chanting “push the doors in.” People at the scene reported chaos:
“They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,” said Pat Alexander. “Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over.”
Kimberly Cribbs said “When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!’ They kept shopping.”
The deals included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.
The Wallmart in question, in Long Island NY
I was wondering why this would happen. I’ve been in huge crowds–concerts, for example, regularly have many thousands of rowdy, excited riotous fans–but they’re always carefully controlled to minimize the chance of a trampling rush. The Walmart itself is not in a particularly bad part of NY; the average salaries, education, age, and racial composition are more or less normal.
On the other hand, there’s a thread on slickdeals where seancashmere disagrees:
Yeah, really and truly, the people who live in Valley Stream and some points to the East have nice homes and are educated enough, but the people who shop at the Valley Stream Walmart are terrible. They are under educated and poor. Many come from Jamaica and South Ozone Park, Queens, the projects, Rosedale and the surrounding areas…
I don’t buy that particular argument; any tightly-packed large crowd is dangerous, whether filled with the upper or lower crusts. Pictures of the scene show the problem: a small doorway, and way too many people.
A picture of the crowd waiting for Walmart to open
Interestingly, there are other incidents driven by crowds, bargains, and human rage. For example, see Fatal shooting followed toy store brawl about a Black Friday skirmish inside a Toys-R-Us.
Just listen to Gizmodo (oh how I hate to say they’re right on this one)–You Don’t Really Want This Crap. Deals aren’t to die for.
| This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 3rd, 2008 at 11:15 pm and is tagged with walmart stampede, south ozone park, tough jeans, pat alexander, ozone park, racial composition, inch plasma, queens area, average salaries, slickdeals, large crowd, education age, upright vacuum, temp worker, wallmart, cribbs, black friday, walmart, valley stream, rosedale. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback. |
I still can't get over this. How can Wal-Mart not be better at dealing with crowd control after years and years of running events like this?
“My interest in blogging let to the rapid expansion”
i believe you meant 'led' rather than 'let'.
poor schooling i suppose…
i'd like to add that perhaps if you had to fight for an $8 pair of jeans you would….
“The Walmart itself is not in a particularly bad part of NY; the average salaries, education, age, and racial composition are more or less normal.”
so, like, class age and race have no effect on anger and frustration?
so strange.
“but the people who shop at the Valley Stream Walmart are terrible. They are under educated and poor. Many come from Jamaica and South Ozone Park, Queens, the projects, Rosedale and the surrounding areas…”
“The quoted commenter isn't advocating racism, I believe he is engaged in classism, a similar fallacy.”
umm….the quoted commenter is saying that black people are poor at behaving at walmart. i'd call that racism….
you are an idiot.
i don't mind attacking you because you are putting your moronic ideas about the world into the world.
as long as you keep doing it i'll be here to point out how stupid they are.
cheers!
The latest reports say the bystanders were laughing and making jokes as the EMTs tried to revive him. I say whatever set of people that includes deserves to be classified as less than human.
The quoted commenter isn't advocating racism, I believe he is engaged in classism, a similar fallacy.
“but the people who shop at the Valley Stream Walmart are terrible. They are under educated and poor. Many come from Jamaica and South Ozone Park, Queens, the projects, Rosedale and the surrounding areas…
I don’t buy that particular argument;”
Elliott, this isn't even close to an argument. It's nothing more than ignorant prejudice based on race, also known as racism.