The New York Times is reporting that a temporary employee of a suburban New York Walmart was trampled to death when a throng of shoppers tore down the front doors of the store and surged inside.
At 4:55 this morning, a group of 2,000 shoppers began pushing at the doors of the Walmart in Valley Stream, NY. The mob broke the doors off of their hinges and pushed inside the store, knocking down Jdimypai Damour, 34. No one helped him as he lay on the floor.
The NYT says:
People did not stop to help the employee as he lay on the ground, and they pushed against other Wal-Mart workers who were trying to aid Mr. Damour. The crowd kept running into the store even after the police arrived, jostling and pushing officers who were trying to perform CPR, the police said.
“They were like a stampede,” said Nassau Det. Lt. Michael Fleming. “Hundreds of people walked past him, over him or around him.”
Mr. Damour was taken from the Wal-Mart to nearby Franklin Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m., the police said.
The NYT said that crowds were allowed to begin forming at 9pm the previous night. The police were called at around 3:30 AM, but were apparently overwhelmed by calls from other stores.
At the time the doors were broken, several Walmart employees, including the one who died, were trying to hold the doors in place but were overwhelmed by the crowd.
Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death [NYT]
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With all of the bad things I read about everyday, nothing has disturbed me more than this. This was a poor innocent joe, probably was trying to earn some extra money for his family’s own Christmas. May have had young children, I don’t know. Opening the doors at a major retailer shouldn’t be potentially fatal.
He, and no other retail employee deserves to die a humiliating death at the hands of savage cretins seeking poorly made crap.
Think about what type of indiviual would start waiting in line at a WalMart on Thanksgiving night to purchase a $9.00 Incredible Hunk DVD, and not think about killing someone to save 10 bucks. Most likely, a complete miscreant. Walmart knows what type of customers they have and should have appropriate security.
I needed some laundry detergent and paper towels this morning, and I’ll usually got to Walmart once a month to purchase these items. But I went to Safeway instead, and just paid more, because I was actually scared to go to WalMart.
I often go shopping on Black Friday, but never, ever, ever at a department store.
I usually hit places like local record shops or clothing stores. Smaller places that have more modest sales, but that are shoppable.
It’s absolutely appalling to anyone with any common sense or decency that these already-rich corporations would intentionally engineer a hazardous and potentially fatal event like Black Friday. Irresponsible and disgusting.
I am sad for this country when I see such tradgedy caused by people who will trample another human being just to be the first in line to get $20 off on Guitar Hero.
Outlaw after Thanksgiving sales.
I wonder why they were holding the doors. Were they trying to keep the mob out, or trying to keep the doors from falling on people? Cuz it sounds like a bad idea for a few people to keep out a mob of hundreds.
I wish people would stop saying that this is down to consumer culture or money or sales or the hype of Black Friday. This had nothing to do with any of that. It was a mob of people out of control and motives mean nothing. A mob of people are a herd of bulls, if you stop you die. Anyone else in that mob who stopped could have been the second casualty.
Nothing brings out the season more than the death of a minimum wage employee and the physical assault of a pregnant woman.
I fired up the laptop yesterday morning about 7 and was finished with my Christmas shopping by 11. I got a ton of good deals and, more importantly, I didn’t have to deal with the idiots out shopping. I really wish retailers would stop having the Black Friday sales, even though I know that’ll never happen. Since it won’t ever stop, we’ll continue to get more and more of these tragic stories every year.
Now please use Walmart’s cameras, and charge all those f@ckers with murder. I really feel stabby now.
This is how much a life is worth for these shoppers? Let’s give them some prison time!
as a person who lives in that area, and has shopped next door at Home Depot and NWL, I am pissed off. All those shoppers who killed this man should be held jointly and severally liable for this action. Also, the cops who left the place at 4:30am for no real reason should be charged criminally. this is beyond embarrassing.
@bsalamon: dont bring home depot into this story, be pissed off at walmart not home depot ..proud hd employee–home depot and walmart are 2 seperate corporations! we had no trouble on black friday-and i work at a ghetto store in houston, thank you
American consumerism is disgraceful. A god damned feeding frenzy.
I think that eventually the whole Black Friday thing is going to have to change.
First of all, are any companies REALLY doing their customers a favor by opening up at 6, 5 or even 4 in the morning and then only stocking a very limited quantity of the products that most people want? I sure the hell don’t want to have to get up at 3am in order to shop for something that I’d like to buy. And I’m sure that the employees of retail stores don’t want to deal with getting up that early and working ridiculous hours for the same pay.
What these companies need to do is to stop teasing us. If you’re only going to have 10 of the laptops for $399 then announce it in stores for a few weeks beforehand and then have people register for vouchers for them on the companies website.
This would prevent most of the mob mentality and competitiveness that shoppers are driven to when they get to a store at 5am and see 500 other people there.
Sad, sad, sad.
All in the name of greed.
The sadder part? The people that stepped over the guy as he laid dying. I hope those people have a rememberable Christmas… as they deal with the nightmares that resulted from their greed.
@Corporate-Shill: They’ll be watching that new TV, what are you talking about?
Well done America. Well done. Take a bow.
@shufflemoomin: Generalization, much?
@shufflemoomin: More like, ”Welcome to planet Earth, inhabited by humans”.
I expect to see Wal Mart implement the same sort of ticket system that (I think most) Best Buys use.
A woman named Kitty Genovese was killed in NYC in the 1960′s while many people heard her screams for many minutes. Just knowing and staying mindful that these terrible things can happen seems to have a sobering and maturing effect, except that new people come along who didn’t get the word, until now . . .
@BeataWellwood: Yes, that kind of situation makes me shudder. I’m sure all of those who heard and done nothing, have a reserved space on the train to hell.
I can’t even put words to my disgust over this. It’s just totally mind blowing. Wal Mart doesn’t sell anything I need that bad.
I could understand it if we were talking about a stampede in a grocery store in some third world country where people were starving to death…but a Wal Mart in New York? Unbelievable.
For the last couple of years, if I do any shopping (other than groceries and toiletries) between November and December it get’s done online.
“A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals and you know it.”
Who knew the movie Men In Black was so accurate on human behavior?
This isn’t something you wouldn’t see at your average mosh pit. I’m just continuously confused as to why moshers do it – they’re not rushing to get a plasma television or anything. But god.. what a tragedy.
@batsy: Sorry, but with any mosh pit I’ve seen they have actually HELPED people get out of there if they fall or get hurt. This was nothing more than a mob.
@CFinWV: And what’s the cause of the fall or injury? The mosh pit…
I’m not saying moshers don’t help people who need help, but it’s the same physical forces and mob mentality at work.
They way to stop this is to prevent retailers from putting limits on their “Door Busters.” They would cry foul, but people have proven time and again how stupid they are when it comes to crazy deals (I recall when a man pulled a gun on a CompUSA employee in Miami during the windows 98 launch when he was told that the $98 computers had run out.)
Retailers love the attention that their ads get, and they make these deals to get just that. Thousands of people at their door when they open. If customers knew that they could get the same deal at 8am, or 11am, then there wouldn’t be such a crazy rush.
Sure it would mean much lower discounts, but that’s okay – the Black Friday craze just shows how F’ed up our priorities are anyway.
everyone should pay some sort of reparations to that poor man’s family. if the li walmart is anything like my local one, they have those assholes on security tape and they should all be prosecuted for rioting. charge the ones that started the pushing with murder.
i hate people.
@katieoh: THIS
Honestly, the only thing I want to hear next from this is that people are getting charged with something.
Any of you youngsters remember the 1979 tragedy at the Who concert in Cincinnati? After 11 people were trampled to death, legislation QUICKLY was enacted to stop ‘festival seating’ and every ticket sold had to come with an assigned seat.
Perhaps it’s time on Black Friday to REQUIRE those online to have a ticket for entering the store, 500 people in the store at a time perhaps. The stores would be held legally responsible for ensuring they had proper security for the safety of the general public. Sure retailers will piss and moan, my reply, SO WHAT.
It is EXTREMELY disingenuous for any of these big box retailers (and this just happened to happen at Wal-Mart, it could have been Best Buy or any other big box store) to get exactly what they want, slobbering mobs of over-caffienated, shopping mad people and then to deny responsibility for the golem they have willfully created.
I’m loathe to add any new laws but it is apparent, for the safety of responsible shoppers who WANT to participate in shopping such as this to be protected.
@CaptainConsumer: Not a bad idea…
Even better, random draw tickets, assigning a number to each customer. And thus, controlling when you’ll enter.
Folks, just a friendly reminder to keep it civil.
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Do the combination of this and Walmart’s incessant airing of that register lane holday showtunes commercial make anyone else sick to their stomach?
@catnapped: Ah yes–the Ringing of the Registers WallyWorld commercial that always has me LMAO–because every one of the lanes is staffed and open at once. With bright, energetically smiling faces, just dying to do business.
..and if you look at the background during this thing, there’s no one on the sales floor for them to be smiling at..not a customer OR associate.
I spent 8 hours in line at a FRY’s, 50th in line. an hour before any employee arrived to open the store, we got bum-rushed by the hundreds of people in line behind us. Everyone who waited patiently lost their spots.
I blame the situation on two groups. Highschool students who use the evening as an excuse to party all through the night. The other group are mexicans. They have no morals.
Welcome to America! A microcosm of mindless consumerism!
@kaptainkk: That’s wishful thinking from you part. Welcome to planet Earth, populated with humans.
People, people, people. When are we going to stop the childish behavior of blaming others for our actions and start accepting respnsibility for them? What Walmart did or din’t do is irrelevant. The animals pretending to be shoppers are the ones to have ALL the responsibility on this. We all know that you cannot control the things that happen. You can just control your reaction to them. Didn’t we got angry when a policeman killed a groom last year without a reason? Did we say that the policeman should have CONTROLLED himself? (and I think he should have!). Then why we want a policeman to control himself from commiting a senseless killing, but do not hold that mob to the same standard? In the most farfetch of cases we can still say that the policeman was right and try to make it look that way. In the case of the Walmart employee HOMICIDE there’s no chance. Look at the videos, interview employees, and round as many of those killers as you can and march their posteriors to jail.
@Aisley: I’ll have to agree in order to disagree–Walmart is included in those who need to accept responsibility for their actions. Captain Consumer describes the known problem with this sort of door crush above; it’s also happened at soccer games. The New York Times has a good piece about the event at [www.nytimes.com]
If it’s clear from the videos that people are knowingly inflicting fatal injury on the poor man, by all means, they’re criminals who deserve their fate. But that’s not enough to get Wal-Mart off the hook for setting up a situation that’s demonstrably and forseeably dangerous. It’s not an either/or.
@Aisley:
The whole Black Friday mess needs to be outlawed just like a bar staying open and serving beer all night.
People are just too fucking self absorbed for incidents like this to stop.
I am usually NOT a fan of government or law enforcement intervention, but it sure seems to be bordering on necessary, here.
I have NO idea how to do it right, but if I’m in any position of power, I look at this and say, “Nope… people can’t behave like responsible adults… we have to take away this privilege.”
Sick.
I worked at wal-mart during the back to school rush in the office supply section. There were so many people fighting and cussing each other that I spent most of my time reporting incidents to management. I never tried to break it up. People are just too crazy when it comes to saving a few cents. Wal-mart should have had police there for black friday. They should have had some type of crowd control.
There was a fist fight over a note book when I worked there. Two grown men beating the crap out of each other over a lisa frank note book. Crazy, just crazy.
Looks like all those speeches Bill Cosby has been giving have not been heard…..
Has anyone actually witnessed a cattle stampede? The ones at the front can’t just stop at will…they are being pressed from the rear! WalMart should have had professional crowd control! They are liable.
Not sure if this has been mentioned, but at least one shopper was heard to say, (after it was announced that shopping would be suspended because an employee had been killed) “I’ve been waiting outside since last night.” So the callousness and lack of humanity was not confined to the initial stampede. There were obviously at least some shoppers who were (and probably still are) OBLIVIOUS to the fact that their actions caused the death of a fellow human being. Because saving money is the most important thing in their lives, fuck the rest of the world attitude prevails.
Is this the sign of the Big Box Store take over America syndrome? We loose all our good jobs to China so Big Box retailers and their OVERPAID executives and owners can put more change in their pockets. While the tax payer foots a trillion dollar recovery bill these businesses. Finally the trampling of a consumer (R.I.P.) who simply wants to spend their hard earned dollar.
Lets try to get back to the Ma&Pa type stores for the good of all.
Time to sue Walmart big time for deliberately creating a situation they knew would cause a frenzy, for not providing security and for not closing the store and detaining the “shoppers” for questioning. But for their unsafe practices, this could not have happened.
I wish they would have locked all of the doors and arrested every single customer in that store.
@Sollus: Because certainly every customer in the store is culpable in the man’s death.
Be real.
@Sollus: I don’t think they should have arrested everybody but I think they should have held everyone until the people on the video were identified.
I believe a federal law now needs to be put in place similar to that for buying concert tickets. A lotto system that determines who gets in first etc., real security with real arrest and detain powers, and if it gets out of hand, the store must immediately close for 8 hours. What at the least should’ve happened here, only a 24 hour immediate shutdown as that particular walmart, IMO, was now a murder crime scene.
-Markus
I think there’s going to be some liability issues here along with the fatality since several others were injured and taken to a hospital .
I heard a shrink on CNN Headline News last night and she started to blame the economic conditions and the anchor stopped her and pointed out this stampede wasn’t over food .
Walmart will blame the tramplers and tramplers will blame Walmart .I do not say this jokingly but if at least one of these tramplers is caught and identified what’s to stop the excuse-I was running for the restroom and claim a medical emergency of their own .Still BS .And they’ll claim like the one manager said -people in those lines wind up being cold,tired and hungry among other things .Again not an excuse but it will be used .
Walmart should have a ticket system and/or demanded a more structered and orderly LINE before opening.The customers knowing basically they basically were on an all night camping trip( be it outside a Walmart instead of the woods) should have planned for one physically and mentally .
Too me the ends do NOT justify the means and that’s basically what’s going here .
I heard a shrink on CNN Headline News last night and she started to blame the economic conditions and the anchor stopped her and pointed out this stampede wasn’t over food .
@u1itn0w2day: Good for the anchor.
What’s one of things most people do when they accidentally bump into somebody-they say excuse me .What’s one of the things that people do when they want to get by someone-they say excuse me .
They say excuse me because they know they just violated someone’s personal space or will have to invade their space to get by .
But to not think twice about stepping on someone or pushing someone aside… How many ball games,concerts,movies,buses,trains,planes or over crowded bars and clubs have most people been to where you have to slither by and say excuse to just about everyone to get to the other side of the room ? How many crowded situations have you been to like that without incident or you did say excuse and felt embarrased or guilty that you were in someone’s space .I’m still trying to get how the crowd : the mob or the alledged people outside didn’t even feel or didn’t realize they were offending if not hurting someone by barging through the doors and pushing into people AND employees .
There were so many lines crossed here I just don’t get it .
They tore the freaking doors off the hinges and STEPPED on people… what the heck is wrong with these people? I hope they somehow managed to catch some of these people.
Ok, I work right by this Wal Mart. It’s in a mall complex with a Macy’s, Target and dozens of other stores. No matter the day of week, time of year, time of day, this Wal Mart is always a mad house.
I have stopped in there at 2PM on a Wednesday afternoon in mid-May and it is still a madhouse. It never made sense because I would walk across the parking lot to Target for the same item (at approx the same price) and there was no madhouse.
I absolutely refuse to shop in this WalMart – I’ve been in dozens and have never seen anything like this in my life… So as sad as it is… suffice it to say that this was a disaster waiting to happen. And unfortunately, it did – with tragic results. The entire store – employees, managers, everybody – needs to be fully retrained and the store needs to institute a zero tolerance policy for the way the employees act and get away with it.
I am not saying it’s the store’s fault (I mean, the poor guy was trampled by the neighborhood morons) but at the same time, the store is pretty much a madhouse ALL THE TIME. Restore some order NOW. Customers – shape up or ship out. They have the right to refuse service and should do so and kick your asses out.
It’s sad something like this had to happen. I hope the rich-ass Waltons will do right by this guy’s family (no, they don’t have to… but it would be a nice gesture).
Wal-mart is to blame as they should have taken precautions to only let so many in the store @ a time. I would think that 2000 is way over the fire code.
The fact that problems such as this happen each year @ Wal-mart…without the company doing anything differently each year, says that they care more about profit than human safety.
Three years ago, I was #5 in line and as I entered the store, I was cold-cocked by a guy who ran in from the parking lot. I was there for laptop computers and this guy wanted 4, so he took measures to secure them. The woman who was #3 in line saw the frenzy and actually laid upon her laptop to protect it. It was no use, as the guy picked her up and tossed her aside to get the computer.
And what did Wal-mart do? Nothing.
They have been told for years to implement a ticketing system for BF. We never even saw one employee from Wal-mart come out and and request us to come in nice and calm. They invite the frenzy and feed off its victims.
I would say that this is very close to a ‘negligible homicide’ case as Wal-mart has been warned that this would happen one day and they still haven’t take the measures to prevent tragedies such as this.
Damn you Wal-mart, Damn you to hell! I hope for a large multi-store lawsuit….maybe then they will change their process and policies.
I saw this on the news and got a little excited to read all the comments about it on this site. Is that sad?
“I hope you appreciate that gift. You have no idea how many people I had to kill to get it!”
Yes, that’s a merry Christmas thought…
Three other people were injured, including a woman who miscarried an 8 month pregnancy after being trampled.
I’ll bet my last turkey sandwich there were plain-clothes security guards in the aisles waiting for people to attempt shoplifting. Well, at least no $29 dvd players were harmed in the riot.
Everybody is talking about this tragedy: work, family, barber shop, church, etc., yet on Black Friday all the newsies could do all day long was beat the drum to shop shop shop!!! I suppose they don’t want to be a buzzkill for shoppers–wouldn’t want to slow down the consumption.
As a carpenter and remodeler, I think I need to point out that every picture I’ve seen shows SLIDING doors, not swinging doors. Sliding doors have tracks not hinges. All the reports of the doors being knocked off or pulled off their hinges are incorrect. It wouldn’t be hard to push a door off its tracks, in fact probably easier than detaching a door from its hinges.
Yeah, nit picking I know but if they got this wrong, we should wonder what else they got wrong.
It’s because of insanity like this that I will forever boycott “Black Friday” from here on out — in fact, I’ll avoid shopping anywhere for that whole extended weekend.
All of the “doorbuster deals” being offered are offered in such ridiculously limited quantities that you literally have to camp out in the cold for an entire day and night just for a VERY remote shot at getting that particular item anyway. Everything else is regular price, or on sale for the duration, so why play the Black Friday Mob Game at all?
It’s just gotten to be a truly ugly mess. Best to just avoid it entirely.
In today’s news :
Autopsy: Wal-Mart Worker Was “Trampled to Death”
[gothamist.com]
I worked at Walmart for over a year and on 2 Black Fridays. I have to say this doesn’t even come close to surprising me. Given the WalMart clientelle, and the way WalMarts are run, and the people who work there, I am surprised it didn’t happen in more places and every year.
Whats even sadder is I doubt few of the shoppers even reflected on how sad their life/society is if they are willing to not only wait in the rain, at night, on thanksgiving, with such fervor that they will wrestle and trample other people, just to save a few bucks on the completeley optional and non essential purchase of Guitar Hero.
We always stay home and put up our holiday decorations on the Friday after Thanksgiving. You can bet we’ll be sticking to our own schedule in the future, knowing what we’re missing is getting worse each year!
It’s unfortunate that someone lost their life this way and Walmart should have hired better security for crowd control.I myself working as security and being under staffed for large rock shows have found myself on the floor of a huge mob and there is nothing anyone can really do! I can remember looking up at people and seeing the look on their faces and them wanting to help but it is impossible for them to do anything with that much uncontrollable mass/force being applied.Fortunately I was able to work my way back to my feet which was no easy task even for me being 6’2″ 240lbs and in good physical shape.
I’m sure everyone in the crowd at Walmart weren’t acting like uncontrollable savages, it’s just that when there is a huge unorganized mass of people all taking a half step forward in anticipation of entering the store it creates an unstoppable force at the front of the crowd.The only people I can see as being labeled complete and ignorant jack-asses are those who were angry that the store was closing due to a life being lost, and of course Walmart’s neglect of hiring trained security personnel for crowd control.