The Real Terrorists are out on Black Friday

Let me preface this by saying that I am not in any way trying to make light of terrorist attacks by by title.  The title just worked for what I am writing about today.  I am caught between angry sarcasm and deep sadness by what my mother told me this morning, and as soon as I got home I had to look it up for myself. 

A Walmart worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.

The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.

When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.

"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43.

"They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.

"They took me down, too ... I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back," Overby said.

Damour, a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens, was gasping for air as shoppers continued to surge into the store after its 5 a.m. opening, witnesses said.

Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.

"They pushed him down and walked all over him," Damour's sobbing sister, Danielle, 41, said. "How could these people do that?

"He was such a young man with a good heart, full of life. He didn't deserve that."

Damour's sister said doctors told the family he died of a heart attack.

His cousin, Ernst Damour, called the circumstances "completely unacceptable."

"His body was a stepping bag with so much disregard for human life," Ernst Damour, 37, said. "There has to be some accountability."

Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart's doors in the predawn darkness.

Chanting "push the doors in," the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.

Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.

It didn't work.

The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.

"They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door," said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. "Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over."

After the throng toppled Damour, his fellow employees had to fight through the crowd to help him, police said.

Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like "savages."

"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!'" Cribbs said. "They kept shopping."

When paramedics arrived, Damour's condition was grave.

"They were pumping his chest, trying to bring him back, and there was nothing," said Dennis Smokes, 36, a Wal-Mart worker.
Damour was taken to Franklin Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m.

Hank Mullany, president of Wal-Mart's northeast division, said the company took extraordinary safety precautions.

"We expected a large crowd this morning and added additional internal security, additional third-party security, additional store associates and we worked closely with the Nassau County police," he said in a statement.

"We also erected barricades. Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred."

The 28-year-old pregnant woman and three other shoppers were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries, police said.

In a news conference after the incident, Nassau County police spokesman Lt. Michael Fleming described the crowd as "out of control" and the scene as "utter chaos." He said Wal-Mart did not have enough security onhand.

Fleming said criminal charges were possible but that it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers in surveillance videos.

Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men's Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.

The Long Island store reopened at 1 p.m. and was packed within minutes.

"I look at these people's faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him," said one employee. "How could you take a man's life to save $20 on a TV?"

So I guess nothing says Merry Christmas more than a stampede of people who can't take the time to summon up common sense and what should be an ingrained sense of concern for other people.  This situation disgusts me and though they will probably never catch the individuals who trampled this poor young man, they know who they are.  You can't knock someone over nor step on them without remembering that, unless of course, you are truly a savage.

And if that is not bad enough, this also happened yesterday:

 Two men were shot and killed Friday inside a Toys R Us in Palm Desert, Calif., during a confrontation apparently involving rival groups, city officials said.

Palm Desert Councilman Jim Ferguson said police told him two men with handguns shot and killed each other. Ferguson said he asked police whether the incident was a dispute over a toy or whether it was gang-related. He said police told him they were not going to release further details until the victims' relatives were notified.

"I think the obvious question everyone has is who takes loaded weapons into a Toys R Us?" he said. "I doubt it was the casual holiday shopper."

City spokeswoman Sheila Gilligan said police told her the shooting broke out between "two groups of individuals that have a dispute with each other."

Riverside County sheriff's Sgt. Dennis Gutierrez said Palm Desert police got a call saying shots had been fired inside the store around 11:35 a.m.

Gutierrez confirmed there was a fight but said it was not over a toy.

He released little information at a news conference five hours after the shooting but emphasized there were no outstanding suspects and that no one was arrested. Detectives were reviewing security video and interviewing witnesses, he said.

The incident occurred near the front of the store in the check-out area. Gutierrez said

Witnesses are calling the incident a murder-suicide, but that could not be immediately confirmed.

Bob Friedland, public relations manager for Toys R Us said the company is working closely with local law enforcement to determine the specific details of what happened at the store.

"We are outraged by the act of violence that occurred...and by the fact that anyone would compromise the safety and security of our customers and employees," Friedland said. "Our understanding is that this act seems to have been the result of a personal dispute between the individuals involved. Therefore, it would be inaccurate to associate the events of today with Black Friday."

Shopper Sarah Pacia, of Cathedral City, Calif., told The Desert Sun that she was browsing through the coloring books in the store with her two young sons, ages 4 and 6, when she heard a ruckus coming from the next aisle.

At first, she thought it was a Black Friday scuffle over a toy on sale, the paper reported. Then she heard three or four shots ring out. Store employees quickly escorted her outside.

She said her terrified 4-year-old son Jayden clung to her leg and told her that he didn't want to die.

"This is Toys R Us. There are kids shopping in there," Pacia told the Sun.

Immediately after the shooting, about 20 people rushed into the World Gym across the street from Toys 'R' Us, the gym's assistant manager Glenn Splain told The Associated Press in a telephone interview.

"They were crying, tearing and shaking," Splain said, adding that one woman came in cradling a baby.

"Some people got into a fight," said Splain, who spoke with some of the customers. "One of the guys here thought it was over a toy but it got louder and louder and then there were gunshots."

Palm Desert is about two hours southeast of Los Angeles.

Okay, so maybe this one was gang related, but HELLO??  Toy store!!!  Kids everywhere!  Where is anyone's common sense anymore?

C'mon people, isn't it time we stopped acting like animals who have to save a few bucks and start acting with respect and grace towards each other?  When did it become okay to break down a Walmart door?  When did it become okay to not leave the store when employees announced someone had DIED?  I would expect this kind of behavior out of elephants, being wild and all, but people?  What is wrong with the human race? 

My heart aches for the people who lost a loved one yesterday because of the selfishness of people.  Is Christmas really about getting that deal? Funny, I listened to Christmas carols all day today on Sirius on the way to Lancaster and back and none of the songs talked about killing other people in order to purchase an item.  For that matter, I shopped today and neither myself nor anyone I was in the stores with got so much as bruised by unruly individuals. 

Sadly, human beings should really be beyond such behavior.  It absolutely sickens me.  Christmas isn't about "stuff" and at what price you can get it.  A few people really need to remember that.