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Post by ♥~KarinaKay~♥ on Nov 29, 2008 2:01:26 GMT -11
Wal-Mart worker trampled to death by frenzied Black Friday shoppersThe rest of the article: seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/nationworld/2008448574_shop290.htmlIn a sign of consumer desperation amid a bleak economy, the annual rite of retailing known as Black Friday turned chaotic and deadly, as shoppers scrambled for holiday bargains. A Wal-Mart worker on Long Island, N.Y., died after being trampled by customers who broke through the doors early Friday, and other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man. At least four other people, including a woman who was eight months pregnant, were taken to hospitals. Fights and injuries occurred elsewhere at other stores operated by Wal-Mart, the nation's leading discount chain, which is one of the few retailers thriving in the current economy. Meanwhile, two men at a crowded Toys "R" Us in Palm Desert, Calif., pulled guns and shot each other to death after women with them brawled, witnesses said. The company released a statement late Friday saying the deaths were related to a personal dispute and not Black Friday shopping. Other outbreaks A police officer and security guard intervened, but not before Nicely took an elbow in the face. In the end, she was the one with the $798 television, marked down from $1,000. "That's right," she cried as her adversary walked away. "This here is my TV!" Charisma Booker, also on the hunt for a TV, said she had been shopping at Wal-Mart every Black Friday for nearly a decade. "There are fewer people here this year, but they're more aggressive," she said. "I've never seen anybody fight like this. This is crazy." At a Wal-Mart in Niles, Ill., a mother fought back tears when she discovered someone had taken her cart filled with toys. Many retailers opened earlier this year and offered the biggest discounts in their history. Certainly Wal-Mart was not the only retailer with aggressive Black Friday shoppers. But before Best Buy opened at 5 a.m., shoppers lined up to receive tickets for merchandise they intended to buy, reducing the need to elbow one another to pick up electronic devices. Chuck O'Donnell, district-services manager for Best Buy stores in New Jersey, said the lines "went all the way around the building, just like in years past." Critics of Wal-Mart said the retailer had been negligent about security. "They have problems with crowds every year, and inevitability, people get hurt," said David Nassar of Wal-Mart Watch, a union-financed group. "They should expect to plan properly for this kind of a problem and have adequate security in place, and they don't." Wal-Mart officials said the safety of customers and workers was their "top priority" and the company's "thoughts and prayers go out to the families of those impacted."
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Post by LCellini on Nov 29, 2008 6:19:24 GMT -11
I went to WalMart on my Black Friday adventures yesterday and it was the worst.. It was around 7ish and it was packed with people. I'm sorry to hear this story and I think it's horrible. The thing that gets me most is that people were being jerks about having to close the store. That is just beyond my comprehension that people could be that assy
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Post by mrsdemonologist on Nov 30, 2008 3:56:52 GMT -11
Keith & I have been talking about this since we heard about it. Mob mentality- this is truly sickening. Seems the meaning of Christmas for these people really just centers around capturing the best price on a flat screen.
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CougarBob
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Post by CougarBob on Nov 30, 2008 5:09:30 GMT -11
Keith & I have been talking about this since we heard about it. Mob mentality- this is truly sickening. Seems the meaning of Christmas for these people really just centers around capturing the best price on a flat screen. It makes me wonder what the legal capacity is of some of these store. Every space has a legal capacity, which is posted near the entrance. When stores get so crowded that people are hurt or killed, they must be beyond that capacity. Does someone have to stand at the door with a clicker and count people going in and close the doors when they reach that limit? I can just hear Walmart squawking over limiting how many customers may enter at a time.
Also, when customers are allowed to mill around the doors like cattle in a feedlot, people are going to get hurt trying to enter. Where is the store security? The people may be acting like idiots, but where is the store's mentality?
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Nov 30, 2008 14:11:00 GMT -11
Keith & I have been talking about this since we heard about it. Mob mentality- this is truly sickening. Seems the meaning of Christmas for these people really just centers around capturing the best price on a flat screen. It makes me wonder what the legal capacity is of some of these store. Every space has a legal capacity, which is posted near the entrance. When stores get so crowded that people are hurt or killed, they must be beyond that capacity. Does someone have to stand at the door with a clicker and count people going in and close the doors when they reach that limit? I can just hear Walmart squawking over limiting how many customers may enter at a time.
Also, when customers are allowed to mill around the doors like cattle in a feedlot, people are going to get hurt trying to enter. Where is the store security? The people may be acting like idiots, but where is the store's mentality? Personally I was wondering if it is possible to scan the security cams and see of those causing or running over that man that died can possibly be located and prosecuted for homicide. If you can't hit a person with your car and run, you should not get to trot over some one like an idiot and run either when they are injured or in danger of death. Shame on that walmart for knowing an employee is possibly dead and others injured for not securing the doors and keeping everyone inside until the police come and investigate everything. Then the morons that did this would have been contained in the store and possibly charged as they should have been. Maybe if people are arrested for these incidents, and prosecuted, the general public might think harder, before running through a store like a heard of wild buffalo.
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Pinkberry
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Post by Pinkberry on Nov 30, 2008 17:04:39 GMT -11
There is nothing at Walmart that I would be willing to step on someone to acquire. I really dont think Walmart is at fault here though..the crowds broke through a glass wall/window to get into the store and trampled the employee..theres no way anyone could have expected that. As for room capacity, if you have 100+ people trying to cram into a 20 ft space at one time then thats the problem...walmart is a big enough store to where the capacity is probably in the thousands..
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CougarBob
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Post by CougarBob on Nov 30, 2008 18:15:33 GMT -11
There is nothing at Walmart that I would be willing to step on someone to acquire. I really dont think Walmart is at fault here though..the crowds broke through a glass wall/window to get into the store and trampled the employee..theres no way anyone could have expected that. As for room capacity, if you have 100+ people trying to cram into a 20 ft space at one time then thats the problem...walmart is a big enough store to where the capacity is probably in the thousands.. I disagree. Walmart is responsible for what happens in their store to their customers and their employees. If conditions in that store were not safe, if is the responsibility of the store to recognize that fact and to remedy it. I don't care if it is reasonable or their capacity is large, or whatever, it is the store that must see the problem and fix it. Or face the consequences.
If the crowds outside the store were that large and unruly, why didn't Walmart call the police of put on extra security? Why didn't they put up means of directing traffic and forcing people to enter in a safe and controlled manner? They pay their employees crap and treat them like dirt and, obviously, allow unsafe working conditions. Walmart has NO excuses as far as I can see.
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Nov 30, 2008 19:15:24 GMT -11
There is nothing at Walmart that I would be willing to step on someone to acquire. I really dont think Walmart is at fault here though..the crowds broke through a glass wall/window to get into the store and trampled the employee..theres no way anyone could have expected that. As for room capacity, if you have 100+ people trying to cram into a 20 ft space at one time then thats the problem...walmart is a big enough store to where the capacity is probably in the thousands.. I disagree. Walmart is responsible for what happens in their store to their customers and their employees. If conditions in that store were not safe, if is the responsibility of the store to recognize that fact and to remedy it. I don't care if it is reasonable or their capacity is large, or whatever, it is the store that must see the problem and fix it. Or face the consequences.
If the crowds outside the store were that large and unruly, why didn't Walmart call the police of put on extra security? Why didn't they put up means of directing traffic and forcing people to enter in a safe and controlled manner? They pay their employees crap and treat them like dirt and, obviously, allow unsafe working conditions. Walmart has NO excuses as far as I can see.
I am not saying that walmart has no blame at all. In fact, they bear quite a bit of the blame as they were obviously not equipped to handle their wild animal crowd. But to state that the humans who trotted all over this poor man without a care for what they did to him, or the others they injured, all because they wanted to shop is just as wrong as it would be to say that walmart holds no blame. I believe that the behavior that took place there is NOT the behavior of civilized human beings period. Would you have stomped some one to the ground and kept on going? Would you not have stopped and helped this man? Would you step over some one who is down just so you can rush to get a stupid TV? I bet you wouldn't and neither would I or a lot of people. It would be a totally different animal to have done what people did here. People should be civilized enough and not a bunch of wild buffalo to have known better. The fact that they didn't seem to care, is a great reason why then they should be made to care about it if they think they might face prosecution. You can't stomped some one to the ground without some form of legal resource, and whether or not there is a large crowd there should not excuse personal responsibility. So yes I stand by what I said above. But I also stand in agreement with you that the store also bears responsibility as well in this.
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Pinkberry
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Post by Pinkberry on Dec 1, 2008 12:11:14 GMT -11
The NYT states that: 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. However they later state that walmart needed more security. Since they DID in fact call police and the police did not ask for or send more backup as needed I would say that the blame would also fall on the police force for not getting more officers to the scene.
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Dec 1, 2008 15:33:30 GMT -11
Good points. The fact is, just because a place may not have the worlds best security doesn't excuse humans from personal responsibility for their own behavior, nor does it give them a license to behave like a herd of buffalo on a rampage. At the walmart in my town, there must have been about 500 people lined up at those doors waiting for hours on end, many of them since 10 pm on Thanksgiving night. Obviously, the Walmart in my town did not have the right kind of security or staff for 500 people. YET, although this crowd of 500 were very eager to shop and in a hurry, they did not behave like a bunch of wild animals and show a blatant lack of regard for human safety. We humans can choose and decide our own behavior. Maybe because as time goes on, people want to always point fingers at everything but themselves makes people not care very much what they do, who they hurt, or even if some one dies as a result of their actions. After all, they get taught and reared up just to blame walmart or everything else around them for their own doings.
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CougarBob
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Post by CougarBob on Dec 1, 2008 17:13:04 GMT -11
Was the worker actually stepped on or was it a case where he/she was smashed against a wall or barrier? I've read about and seen video where people were killed or seriously injured when shoved up against something, usually at European soccer matches. Was it a case where the surging crowd pushed people across the victim? I haven't seen any video on this case.
Oh, I never said that only Walmart was to blame, but they should not get off scott free with the excuse that they couldn't control the crowd. If that was the case, they should not be open for business.
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Dec 1, 2008 17:49:27 GMT -11
Was the worker actually stepped on or was it a case where he/she was smashed against a wall or barrier? I've read about and seen video where people were killed or seriously injured when shoved up against something, usually at European soccer matches. Was it a case where the surging crowd pushed people across the victim? I haven't seen any video on this case.
Oh, I never said that only Walmart was to blame, but they should not get off scott free with the excuse that they couldn't control the crowd. If that was the case, they should not be open for business. In this case, people pushed at the door windows and smashed them in (which BTW is the first illegal act as that is now breaking and entering). Then they ran through, knocking this man down onto the ground and proceeded to run over him. So he wasn't pushed or shoved up against a wall. He was literally knocked down onto the floor and trampled on by this stampede. Others were knocked down the same way but did manage to live with injury. In fact, the police have discuss the possibility of criminally charging some of these people, especially those that smashed through the glass doors. Walmart definitely deserves to face some liability here. Maybe they should stop having sales since it seems even the cops that were there couldn't control that crowd either, and the people obviously believe that they can break the laws without consequence because it will all rest on the establishment rather than personal responsibility. But it is easy for anyone to point a finger and say there should have been all kinds of security after the fact, blah blah blah but that doesn't prove it that it would have prevented anything. If people behave like wild buffalo over sales this can happen in any and every store out there. How many times have you gone into a crowded grocery store due to sales? How many security guards do you notice on hand? How about the malls around Christmas time? Do you think that the security they have on hand is equipped to handle the crowd should the crowd suddenly go wild and turn ugly? If you had a yard sale that was hopping with 50 people in your yard, should you be sued for not having security because they all notice a bike near your front door and decide to stampede towards it like a group of bulls? The point is, there are sales all over the place and most often stores have tons of people that they would never be able to handle should the crowd suddenly go wild. But the animals that illegally busted down the glass doors and then caused the death, what they did was criminal with the result of homicide. They should, in my opinion, get punished according, to criminal activity resulting in death.
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Dec 1, 2008 18:16:58 GMT -11
www.truveo.com/Death-at-WalMart-on-Black-Friday-caused-by/id/262725291I found this video this guy did about the. He pretty much sums it up, a bunch of wild animals crushing some one to death without so much as a care in the world for this life they destroyed. Even other shoppers who witnessed this were disgusted and had choice ways of describing this crowd in particular.
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Post by ♥~KarinaKay~♥ on Dec 2, 2008 3:04:53 GMT -11
One thing I would like to add about a stampede of that sort. If you happen to be in the middle of it, you cannot stop. You either go forward yourself, or you will be tripped, crushed, and added to the casualty list.
I bet those who were not in the stampede were fortunate enough to be separate from the original rush. I guarantee you none of them had the ability to stop it.
I say prosecute the ones who broke the window. They are the ring leaders.
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Post by xXSpookyXx on Dec 2, 2008 5:22:23 GMT -11
Exactly! To me those are the ones mostly responsible for the events that unfolded. As for others, whether they intentionally ran over the man without a give a crap in the world or if they were pushed forward, it would be hard to determine on them. Some of the workers had to literally fight their way through the crowd just to get to this man, risking injury themselves.
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