The 34-year-old man was at the entrance of the Valley Stream Walmart store when it opened at 5 a.m. local time and was knocked to the ground, the police report said.
The exact cause of death was still to be determined by a medical examiner.
Four shoppers, including a 28-year-old pregnant woman, were also taken to local hospitals for injuries sustained in the incident, police said.
The Friday after America's Thanksgiving holiday is known as Black Friday and marks what is traditionally the busiest retail day of the year, kicking off the Christmas shopping season.
U.S. stores across the country opened in the early hours of Friday to offer discounts to consumers hit by a contracting economy. Hundreds of shoppers waited on line before dawn at some locations to secure deals on holiday gifts.
Representatives at Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, were not immediately available for comment.
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This is just soooo sad and it didn't have to happen!
I do hope those shoppers realize what they have done.
They should be very very ashamed of themselves.
Merry Christmas to you too. dammmmm
11 comments:
I do hope they realize their part in this and think twice about that type of mob mentality the next time they go after a bargain.
i doubt anything will ever change
i wonder if that pregnant woman was the one that miscarried or something
Wow! I like a bargain too, but not enough to stand in line all night and work myself up into a frenzy. This is a truly shocking story.
i saw this headline on my homepage and chose not to read the article; the headline was sickening enough.
black friday is right. a very black day for the family and friends of this young man.
dave, she very well may have been the one who miscarried.
i too hope ALL of those responsible realize what they have done.
one of the many reasons i stopped going out on ''black friday.''
Sadly, not if you know the area. That is only a few miles from where I am originally from. I never did like the Green Acres Mall (where this WalMart is located). It's always been a bad area, but there is no excuse for this.
Just keep spreading that Christmas love and cheer everyone.
I did hear on the news later that the store shoo-ed out the shoppers and closed the store. I don't know for how long, whether it was a few minutes, a few hours, or the rest of the day.
So those shoppers walked away empty handed anyways. Well, most of them if not all? Which I was glad to hear they did that.
I didn't hear anything about a woman miscarrying yet. But will be listening to any updates.
When I read this, I was totally shocked down to my the soles of my boots, as the saying goes.
Even realizing it was a mob mentality sort of thing, I just couldn't believe that people had the mindset of being the first in and to get those gifts/bargains that they didn't didn't give a damm about running over others. Oh, I know, they probably didn't realize at the time what they had done and were upset and very confused about why they were being asked to leave the store.
But you know, I can't lay all the blame at the feet of the shoppers either.
Walmart has a chunk of the blame in all this too.
And every other store that participates in this Black Friday thing to kick off the christmas shopping spree. Is a wonder this situation doesn't happen more often.
This news has so far been reported in Blogs by 3 of my contacts. I hope it reaches to everybody, specially those who were responsible for such salvage behaviour as a mirror to see their true selves. All that barbaric act to save a few dollars. I further hope the police would identify the culprits and severely punish them. The saddest thing is the big WHY that should have happened in a supposedly rich and civilised country.
Sorry. I don't buy this. That's shifting responsibility. I'm not saying that retail outlets and corporations don't have their own evils, but I don't think they should be blamed for this. I don't think we should blame mob mentality either. Those people chose to be there and chose to rush in and chose to ignore the people falling around them.
We each have the power to make choices for our own actions. But blaming others for our choices is a wonderful way to relieve our own guilt for the choices we make. Why? Because guilt shouldn't exist if people are so inherently good. Yep, we're all so good but bad things still happen at our hands. If it's not my fault, it has to be somebody else's, right? So blame an entity that does not have feelings, and the individual(s) involved are falsely exonerated from all guilt. Maybe if we all quit blaming others and took responsibility for our own choices, seeking forgiveness and offering restitution where we have wronged others, things like this wouldn't happen.
You misunderstood me snow.
I wasn't shifting the blame to the corporation. I only said they should shoulder part of the blame as well. If they didn't have things like 'Black Friday', then this type of thing wouldn't have happened. They could find another way.
Or have automatic door locks where they can unlock them at the flick of a switch, keeping their employees safely hanging from the rafters, away from the throng of people that don't care who they hurt as they rush for that great buy. Because, IMO, those shoppers didn't care if they hurt anybody, doing it the way they did.
Seen something like this happen in Toronto a few years ago. A well known store who managed to survive the big box stores coming to town. There was a mad rush. People got hurt. He never ever did a thing like that again, saying the customer was more important to him than the almighty dollar. And you know what? His business actually increased when he made that decision.
I didn't misunderstand. But I won't take over your page with a response here.
Looking at my next comment, I realize I responded after all.
Thankfully the pregnant woman was released from the hospital, and the miscarriage was determined to be just a presumption.
My condolences do go out to that employee's family. Holiday cheer will never look the same to them. :(
PS I do agree that Wal-Mart and other retailers can and should learn from this experience and would do well to end special sales and early openings for Black Friday, along with their practice of offering only limited numbers of the most choice items, all practices that are intended to take advantage of and magnify people's "me first, just looking out for #1" mentality. Calculating the results of such intentions is their responsibility, and such dire results they are.
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