Shopping frenzy and death. At Walmart.
ADDED: I wonder if it's true that Damour was literally trampled. Did people really walk on him and brutally crush or smother him? Or did he simply fall over in the push and then die perhaps of a heart attack?
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"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."
Green Acres is the place not to be.
The store called out over the speaker to clear the store because an employee had been killed and the shoppers response was, "I am been in line all morning".
Sad.
Why on earth would anyone wait in a line at 9:00 on Thanksgiving night for the doors to open the next morning? What on earth is so fucking important to purchase?
Pathetic.
My mom is going to Green Lake this week.
Have you been to Green Lake Althouse?
I googled it and it is a little town north of Madison but has swank restaurants and golf courses and a theater. My mom is going to some Christmas "pageant". I never even heard of it before.
Is Greenbush a good italian restaurant? My mom went there this week and thought I would like it. It is under the Italian Club in Madison on Regent Street.
Hi Palladian. How are you? Kisses.
The secular rituals that have accrued around the Christmas season disgust me, and I resent being assaulted by the barrage of holly-trimmed shit that now begins flying the day after Halloween. This stampede of sows to the Arkansas-spawned trough of crap from Cathay is a good metaphor for the true nature of the un-holy-day of greed and gluttony and, by extension, the true nature of humanity underneath the thin veneer of civilization. A mob of fat slobs who killed a man to get at Chinese-made garbage that is marked down from 2.99 to 1.99 and is worth 14¢ and will be clotting a landfill well before the next time the Demon of Avarice lashes his reindeer to his chariot of death.
May the slow motion economic collapse ruin everyone's Merry Christmas.
Bah humbug.
I want to do my neighbor who moved in next door.
He is straight and a total bitch. He appears on CNSBC sometimes. His parents paid for his unit in full-totally hate him. I googled him and he has a blog and he is hot. He is into Asian chicks though.
Palladian said...Green Acres is the place not to be.
LOL.
I remember this from 25 years ago.
Althouse you should go to a Walmart or some other horrible store and tape some of the action.
It would be interesting to see it in a car wreck kind of way.
The Times article said there was an eight month pregnant women in that stampede. They smashed through the fucking doors but WalMart taped them up and they were ready and back in business at 1:00.
I would be interested in seeing the depravity from afar.
I am watching The Misfits on TCM.
Clark and Marilyn's last movie and Monty was in no condition to be even making a movie at that time.
Arthur Miller was a wreck during the entire filming of the movie.
Palladian turn the frown upside down.
Eleven people were crushed to death in a stampede at a Who concert in Cincinnati thirty years ago.
Why on earth would anyone wait in a line at 9:00 on Thanksgiving night for the doors to open the next morning? What on earth is so fucking important to purchase?
Lahooooooooooo-seeeeeeerrrrs!
I've been trying to figure out what, exactly, Damour thought was so important to defend.
I've been trying to figure out what, exactly, Damour thought was so important to defend.
Well if it was me standing there to stem the tide of humanity looking for a bargain, I'd have been standing there with a baseball bat.
Or preferably with a 12 gauge. Nothin says crowd control better than the sound of a load of buckshot being rammed into the breech.
The gauche rubes and barbarians in flyover country have no manners.
This did happen in flyover country, right?
A friend of mine works at the Wal-Mart here and they weren't allowed to close the doors. Last year an elderly shopper was knocked over and hospitalized when they opened the doors. So this year they put the super-specials on pallets and wrapped them in black plastic and put them out *while* customers were in the store. Then when the "sale" started, they just had to remove the plastic. Everyone still had to go find the pallet that had their stuff on it... sounds like they put them out sort of randomly instead of electronics in the electronics section.
I think it's stupid. You couldn't pay me to go shopping the Friday after Thanksgiving.
I agree with Synova. I mean, really, people. You can buy that same stuff on the Internet, for the same price or lower, and you don't have to wait in line, and you can usually get free shipping if it's anything worth any money.
Or, you could wait until next weekend. Or tomorrow.
I see from the article that the unions have decided to use this incident to push their agenda. Disgusting.
Rev, you mean issues like workplace safety? Who needs that?
Yes, how de classe to use an example of woeful management to push for better worker conditions.
Human Nature-
Stampede Death Toll Is Cut to 74 Filipinos
Seventy-four people were killed Saturday in a stampede at a stadium in Manila as they scrambled to get into a popular Philippine television game show offering cash and other prizes, the health secretary and witnesses said.
Pop fans' stampede crushes 54 to death in Minsk metro
THE FIRST of many funerals will be held in Belarus today after at least 54 people, most of them teenage girls, were crushed to death in a metro underpass stampede on Sunday.
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... 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...
Detective Lt. Michael Fleming, who is in charge of the investigation for the Nassau police, said the store lacked adequate security. He called the scene “utter chaos” and said the “crowd was out of control.” As for those who had run over the victim, criminal charges were possible, the lieutenant said. “I’ve heard other people call this an accident, but it is not,” he said. “Certainly it was a foreseeable act.”
Chief Wiggum was unavailable for comment.
COLLEGE FOOTBALL; Wisconsin Victory Celebration Turns Dangerous
Published: October 31, 1993
A day meant for celebration took on a far darker tone this afternoon when at least three people were critically injured and five others were seriously hurt in a crush of fans rejoicing over Wisconsin's 13-10 defeat of Michigan.
In all, more than 70 people were taken to three local hospitals as a result of the incident, which came moments after Wisconsin's victory before a sellout crowd of 77,745 at Camp Randall Stadium. As of late last night, 16 people were still hospitalized. The great majority of those injured were reported to be women.
The Badgers' victory was one of their biggest in decades and left them in the running for a Big Ten title and a visit to the Rose Bowl for the first time in three decades.
But the victory was overshadowed by what came afterward. As the game ended, thousands of jubilant spectators in the Wisconsin student sections behind one of the end zones began pouring out of the stands, where they confronted a chain-link fence designed to keep fans off the playing field....
"We tried to get some of the people back so the people below them who were getting trampled could get out," a Dane County deputy sheriff, John Brogan, said. "It was just too loud for them to hear. People kept falling on top of each other."
The injured lay helpless as sobbing friends knelt by their sides calling for assistance. Wisconsin players waded into the crowd and began carrying away some of the people who were down.
"It was the scariest thing I've ever seen," said offensive tackle Joe Panos. "I had to do what I had to do. A couple of them were blue, literally blue."
"People had their arms pinned and twisted and they couldn't breathe," said Wisconsin place-kicker John Hall. "I just started to pull people and throw them over the fence."
People do stupid things, and it only takes a few really aggressive people to make a crowd scary and dangerous.
This isn't about Wal-Mart, or bargains, or materialism.
It is about trusting other people to consider the crowd.
This poor man, though.
this tragedy says something about us that might not be pleasant for us.
i think the the wall street "irrational exuberance" that aided this financial mess we are in, its connected to it somehow.
Many years ago some young heir to a fortune who hated corporations said he'd give it all away to people who lined up and came to thus and so location.
There resulted a spectacularly ugly crowd.
Somebody else might get stuff you could have gotten, is the general crowd mentality.
The crowd self-selects for ugliness.
What a bunch of filthy animals. Further confirmed by the fact some of them continued acting like filthy animals even after they knew they'd just trampled someone to death.
Rev, you mean issues like workplace safety? Who needs that?
Yeah, I'm sure if Walmart had included a "don't get trampled by a crazy mob of bargain-obsessed housewives" section in the employee manual this would have been avoided.
Please. The unions are happy that Damour is dead; it gives them another stick to beat a non-union shop with. This has nothing to do with worker safety, and everything to do with the unions wanting to get their hooks in one of the few big corporations they haven't managed to fuck up yet.
Nice reinforcement of southern sterotypes radio29
My daughter said a coworker at Victoria's Secret was readying the store at a few minutes before 5 a.m., the early bird opening time on Friday at the mall store. A man in line yelled Quit straightening things up and open the gate, you bitch. The manager thankfully wouldn't let the guy in.
Buying presents.
For Christmas.
What item could possibly merit becoming part of a stampede?
What small savings warrants a mob?
What kind of people kill a man for trinkets and doodads?
When I was in middle school in the 1970s, the science teacher showed us an art film set in the dystopic near-future full of toxic urban pollution. The protagonist was an unassuming man who spent all his time gathering various species to save them inside a giant greenhouse.
He did it for love, and he was sort of like Noah, because people scorned him but in the end they wanted to get inside the greenhouse themselves.
They kept banging on the glass until it shattered into a million pieces dooming everything inside.
Mr. Jdimytai Damour is dead.
Rev, you mean issues like workplace safety? Who needs that?
How in the world is unionization going to stop a random act of violence? Leave it to the NYT to politicize even this article.
I think workplace safety is a legitimate issue. You've got a mob scene and some poor bastard unlikely to have a clue about the possible negative impacts of the situation. Unions using the situation to push their agenda is not at all surprising nor is it particularly disgusting.
Beggar in Pakistan crying in the street.
Pakistani mother takes children and walks in front of train because she cannot feed them.
Price of onions nearly doubles in two days; price of potatoes doubles in two days. Pakistani children grovel for rotten onions.
The police said they couldn't handle the crowd? How lame. And if the people were so wild that the police couldn't handle them, how is Wal-Mart supposed to handle them? Workplace safety? Bull. This is nothing to do with Wal-Mart and everything to do with mob mentality and rioting.
Law enforcement should have done a better job. If a mob looks like it's turning into a riot, you don't say, "Well, we yelled into a bullhorn and everything, so oh well. Let's go home." Restore order like real police.
"Green Acres is the place not to be." "Have you been to Green Lake Althouse?" "Is Greenbush a good italian restaurant?"
A lot of green...
"Althouse you should go to a Walmart or some other horrible store and tape some of the action."
You'd like me to go find obnoxious people and then be more obnoxious.
Palladian wrote:
"A mob of fat slobs who killed a man to get at Chinese-made garbage that is marked down from 2.99 to 1.99 and is worth 14¢ and will be clotting a landfill well before the next time the Demon of Avarice lashes his reindeer to his chariot of death."
HA! Not ready for the annual Faux Faulkner contest, but good stuff.
This has become the American version of "running with the bulls." Wal-Mart and other large retailers encourage it and should at least be held accountable in civil courts. Wal-Mart knew from past years it was a scary situation and did nothing to protect its employees because it likes the cheap publicity. If that was my son who died on a Wal-Mart floor for that corporation I would be absolutely livid.
Wal-Mart has successfully resisted unionization of its employees. New York State’s largest grocery union, Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers, called the death of Mr. Damour “avoidable” and demanded investigations.
And the unions use this opportunity of the dead WalMart employee, to pounce on the living body of WalMart the company.
If WalMart is forced to unionize....mark my words. Prices will go up, employees will be laid off, the low cost prescription plan that helps millions of low income people will be diminished if not gone, WalMart will close stores, suppliers who are dependent upon WalMart sales will downsize and more people will go out of business and more jobs lost.
Good work Union......it wasn't enough to kill the auto industry, steel industry and turn our public education system into a world wide joke. No.....let's kill retail.
People are in a recession, so they are trying to get the sales, and purchase what they can before the left-wing illuminati take all of their money in taxes.
Seven Machos --
"The gauche rubes and barbarians in flyover country have no manners.
This did happen in flyover country, right?"
Just so you know, I didn't miss the irony. Nothing of the sort happened down here in small-town Mo.
Well if it was me standing there to stem the tide of humanity looking for a bargain, I'd have been standing there with a baseball bat.
Or preferably with a 12 gauge. Nothin says crowd control better than the sound of a load of buckshot being rammed into the breech..
KA CHUNK!! :-)
Wow, I didn't even notice all the Green-how interesting.
The videotape would be interesting viewing entertainment and psychological experiment. There would be so much to loathe and mock and laugh at-but it sounds so fun. Not watching someone get trampled to death though.
Not video, but here's a slide show!
PS- Eyewitnesses say Damour was indeed trampled and that the police officers who administered cpr were stepped on while helping him.
He was a young man, so I think the odds of being trampled to death are greater than him dying of a heart attack.
If there's any justice, whatever Chinese shit they bought will leak melamine or lead into their homes and poison them to death.
Actually, I just read that his family members were told that he did in fact die of a heart attack.
Not that that makes any difference, he was still murdered.
One of my favorite fictional lines of Truth:
K: "No, a person is smart. People are dumb, panicky, dangerous animals, and you know it."
People from Long Island are fucked up.
That's why you should do your shopping in beautiful downtown Brooklyn where nothing gets trampled but prices.
There are ways to control crowd crush so that these things do not happen. After several tragic epiodes and many studies the techneques are well known to designers of public events. One easy one is serpentine barriers.
Also, professional employees - not a temp worker like Mr. Damour should have been given this task.
The store was not new. They could have reasonably expected a large crowd - they should have had at least some security.
"That's why you should do your shopping in beautiful downtown Brooklyn..."
I'm staying away from Target until after Christmas!
Target is on Atlantic Avenue dude.
I am talking about the many beautiful boutiques to be found in Brownstone Brooklyn in Brooklyn Heights, Cobble Hill and Carroll Gardens. Specifically the ones on Court St that specialize in sizes from 10 to 28 but which have great accessories, pocket books, candles, Jewelry and everything you would ever need to get your lady for Christmas or Chanukah
When I read this story, I had to check and see what country I was in. We are too rich a nation for this kind of desperation to exist. Shameful. I wrote more at http://blog.criba.org if you're interested.
Heart attack, hell.
Some years ago there was a ninety year old woman from Belen, NM who was murdered by a 22 year old thug who was jumping on her chest.
The cause of death was listed as a 'heart attack' so the thug's lawyer tried to get him off by claiming that he didn't kill her, she just happened to have a heart attack while he was coincidentally jumping on her chest.
The jury didn't buy it, and he was convicted of first degree murder-- he either caused the heart attack by directly traumatizing her heart, or by causing fear and pain which led to it. Either way, he killed her, and either way these shoppers are guilty of the same.
I hope they shut the store down and kicked everyone out.
And by the way, this should serve as a notice-- next time something like this happens then the store itself should be held responsible.
Look, the people at the front end of a push like this may not be able to stop themselves as people behind them -- who can't see the problem -- are creating great force. In any case, they have reason to fear that they will be knocked down and will trip even more people into a suffocating pile. Don't be so quick to condemn those who ran forward.
For everyone blaming the store, what about the police? The police knew about the situation outside the store and did nothing. Now the officers in charge are trying to lay the blame on Wal-Mart. For what? Not equipping every Wal-Mart in the nation with a riot squad just in case? Is it not the job of the police to maintain law and order? These craze stampedes are not common at retail locations, so it's bizarre to say that the store should have known it would happen. Given that these incidents are rare, this seems like an obvious job for law enforcement. You know, one of the few totally legitimate functions of government.
I think that the only reason people are quick to blame the store is because the store happens to be Wal-Mart and hating Wal-Mart is in. If a mob broke down the doors of some mom and pop retailer and trampled a worker to death, no one would blame the owners. In fact, I don't think people would even react this harshly toward other retailers, such as Target, that are considered to be more in fashion.
As for unions, does being in a union make you trample-proof? How would that make a bit of difference? Is being in a union going to confer superpowers on employees that allow them to hold back raging mobs with eye rays? Give me a break.
The man killed was not employed by Walmart. He was their agent, not their employee.
He was working for a security agency hired by Walmart. Using the security agency, rather than hiring an employee, allows Walmart to escape some liability and responsibility.
If Damour had been injured, he would be seeking workmen’s comp from the security firm and wouldn’t get anything from Walmart. Since he died, Walmart will assert that his survivors should be limited to obtaining compensation from his employer — the security firm — actually, the security firm’s payments to NY state workmen’s comp, not from Walmart.
To obtain compensation, Damour’s survivors need to sue. Their case would be much stronger if NY State finds Walmart to have exercised criminal negligence with regard to crowd control. Walmart would settle quickly out of court, if the firm is criminally charged. If Walmart is not criminally charged, Walmart will push the civil trial far to the future and the survivors won’t see a cent for a decade or more.
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