Black Black Friday: Three Dead

by Damozel | Three so far, it seems.  I'd say "What on earth is the matter with people?" if there were any point.  Trampling someone to death in your eagerness to sample Wal Mart's inventory?  Getting into a gun fight at "Toys R Us"?  Tragic.  Also:  pathetic.  Let us assess what Larisa Alexandrovna rightly calls "the sick and twisted details of the deranged "consumer" society we live in."

The dystopian future of the consumer culture. is upon us.  The 34 year old Wal Mart employee died trying to hold the doors shut against a crowd of crazed shoppers who really do seem to have lost any sense of proportion, not to mention of the season.

I mean, it's Wal Mart.  It's cheap imported clothing, toys, and medium-quality technology.  If they run out, there will be more.  There is always another Wal Mart.  Nobody should die defending Wal-Mart from invasion.  And yet someone did.  

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres 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.

Tension grew as the 5 a.m. opening neared....By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer. Fists banged and shoulders pressed on the sliding-glass double doors, which bowed in with the weight of the assault. Six to 10 workers inside tried to push back, but it was hopeless.

Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains. One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him. Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.  (NYT)

That is just disgusting.

One can only hope that those who were part of this mob wake up screaming in the night for many months to come, and that those who trampled this man to death to get to the cheap consumer goods are racked with guilt every Christmas for the foreseeable future. 

But probably they won't be. Anyone who could do that in the first place is probably beyond reach.  

Some shoppers who had seen the stampede said they were shocked. One of them, Kimberly Cribbs of Queens, said the crowd had acted like “savages.” Shoppers behaved badly even as the store was being cleared, she recalled.

“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” Ms. Cribbs told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.” (NYT)

The police acknowledge that a criminal prosecution would be difficult. 

[E]ven with videos from the store’s surveillance cameras and the accounts of witnesses, Lieutenant Fleming and other officials acknowledged that it would be difficult to identify those responsible, let alone to prove culpability.(NYT)

The police lambasted Wal Mart for inadequate crowd control and a lack of safety barriers.  I'm fine with Wal-Mart being held accountable up to a point.  But nobody should have to expect a crowd of holiday shoppers to trample someone to death.

The other incident was a shooting at Toys R Us in Palm Desert, California. 

Two men pulled guns and shot each other to death in a crowded toy store Friday after the women with them erupted into a bloody brawl, witnesses said. Scared shoppers fled but no one else was hurt.

The violence erupted on Black Friday, the traditional post-Thanksgiving start of the holiday shopping surge, but authorities indicated the shooting wasn't related to a shopping frenzy.

Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said the fight was not over a toy. He said handguns were found by the men's bodies, but he released little other information. He would not answer a question about whether the shooting was gang-related. (MSNBC)

There's festive for you:  a double murder at a Toys R Us Store, right in front of the parents and their little children, shopping for Christmas gifts..  

Details about the shooting were still spotty, but witnesses said the scene at the store and nearby businesses was chaotic.

"We had a bunch of people who came in around noon," Jeff Valare, manager at the World Gym across the street from the Toys R Us, told The Times. "They looked distressed. One woman had an infant in her arms and was crying. They were telling us they heard five or six gunshots. They were inside the Toys R Us and fled out the back."

Glenn Splain, another worker at the gym, told the Associated Press that some Toys R Us customers "were crying, tearing and shaking. ... Some people got into a fight. ... One of the guys here thought it was over a toy, but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots."

Saul Diaz, who works as an assistant manager at the Jiffy Lube next door to the Toys R Us, said he was speaking with a customer when a stampede of 45 people ran in. Some looked distraught, some were crying.

"They were running fast, straight into the car bays. There was a couple of ladies with little kids, about 3 years [old]. They were all pale. The kids were shouting, 'Mom, I'm scared.' We immediately closed the store," Diaz told The Times. His staff locked the front doors and closed the car bays. "We took everyone into a basement bay, where we keep inventory," he said.(LA Times)

Would you like to see photos of law enforcement personnel and shoppers looking understandably distressed?  Here are photos.

So there it is.  Who is to blame? some ask.  The incidents are not really the same, except to the extent that they reflect the same sort of sociopathic self-importance on the part of those involved. 

Mark Silva has a suggestion for allocating blame:

Lay a little blame at the feet of the government, for exhorting Americans to spend more money and shake off that recession gripping the nation. Lay some blame on the media, for stoking the hype surrounding one day of retailing which is, in fact, nothing more than the first of 28 shopping days left until Christmas, with cable news hawking footage of ravenous shoppers storming the doors of stores opening at 4 am.

And in Palm Desert, California, where police say an argument preceded the shooting at a Toys "R" Us, lay some blame on a gun-happy culture which encourages the resolution of simple domestic disputes with the pulling of a trigger.

I blame society, which includes everyone involved individually and collectively.  Guns, consumer goods, the craze to buy stuff, and the absolute loss of any sense of scale.  

Memeorandum has more.

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