The grocery shoppers of Philadelphia are a determined bunch. Well, that, or they really want some cereal. Police say that after a stabbing at a Pathmark supermarket yesterday evening, customers weren’t really fazed. Mostly, they were annoyed that they couldn’t get to the dairy case. Unobservant shoppers walked and pushed their carts through the puddle of blood.

To be fair, a puddle of blood in a grocery store that features a meat department isn’t completely unthinkable, but it isn’t something that I would want on my shoes, either. Did they think it was tomato juice? Did they actually not see the blood? Did they think it was fluid that had leaked from a very large steak? The more I think about this, the more it bothers me.

The stabbing itself was nothing unusual: the two men involved had a pre-existing dispute. Police found a kitchen knife in the store, and later arrested a suspect. The victim survived, and is in critical but stable condition at a nearby hospital. However, the shoppers of Northeast Philadelphia really do not let a little thing like a stabbing and the presence of police to get between them and their dairy products.

“Some people actually asked the police if they could reach on the shelf and grab some dairy products that were where most of the blood was, [because] we had that area cornered off,” one officer explained to TV station WTXF.

Bonus points for pragmatism, we suppose: why should someone have to go to a whole different store when the item they need is right there, on the other side of the crime scene tape?

1 Injured In Stabbing Inside Northeast Philadelphia Pathmark [WTXF]

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