By: Lynn Green
I’ll start off by saying that I enjoy shopping at Wal-mart and appreciate their quality and affordable prices.
Having said that, under no circumstances would I go to Wal-mart or any other store on this planet the day after Thanksgiving. Why? Because I’m not going to deal with the crowds or the danger that goes along with crowds.
Besides, Christmas is not supposed to be about crowds and saving money. Have people forgotten that Christmas represents the birthday of our precious Lord and Savior, Jesus Christ? What on earth does crowds and stampedes have to do with that?
Commercialism at its best.
And now a death in New York over nonsense and worldliness:
A Wal-mart worker died after being trampled when hundreds of shoppers smashed through the doors of a Long Island store Friday morning, police and witnesses said.
The 34-year-old employee, a temporary maintenance worker, tried to hold back the unruly crowds just after the Valley Stream store opened at 5 a.m.
Witnesses said the surging throngs of shoppers knocked the man down. He fell and was stepped on. As he gasped for air, shoppers ran over and around him.
“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Jimmy Overby, 43, a co-worker. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down too…I literally had to fight people off my back.”
There was a rumor going around that a woman lost a baby. The silver lining here is that she did not lose her baby.
Loading ...
Mandela turns 92
Haiti Housing
My sister told me about this. I am very familiar with this particular Walmart location and no longer shop there. It is located behind the Green Acres mall and because it borders on Queens and Long Island, you get a lot of the riff raff traffic from Brooklyn and Queens and as one person interviewed in the source article put it, “They act like savages.”
For starters, you are lucky to make it in and out of the parking lot in one piece because they come off the parkway and fly at record speeds into that parking lot. No one wants to share the road or yield to traffic that is coming out of the other neighboring store lots.
When I have shopped in this Wal-mart in the past on a regular day (I would never go there or any other store on Black Friday), it was like a zoo. People would open items in the store and leave the open carton there with nine times out of ten the half used product left.
I’ve observed and even inadvertently purchased some tampered food items from that store, because people would open the food and either eat some of it, or do God only knows what to and stick it back on the shelf.
Many sale items do not stay in stock at this location and I am guessing that is why folks chose to trample each other to get the 1 or 2 TVs that they did have for $798, instead of simply asking for a raincheck, or what the store is substituting instead.
I’m glad they opened a new store closer to me (I won’t even say where, so that the riff raff will not come). The store is clean, more orderly and the local police and security are not having that nonsense that goes on in the Valley Stream store.
My heart goes out to those who did lose their lives while simply doing their jobs and for that pregnant woman who was stomped on. I’m not sure really what this store can do in the future to prevent things like this from happening.
It’s bad enough that the movie theatre in the same shopping center forces patrons to go through a metal detector since the deadly massvive shoot out that occurred back when “Boyz in the Hood” was out.
The people from this area and the surrounding areas, just don’t seem to ‘get it’ and refuse to act as though they have any sense.
And another thing, the towns that immediately surround this Walmart have made NATIONAL headlines for having the highest foreclosure rates. We are in a depression, so can someone explain to me where this many people even came up money to go Black Friday shopping to mow people down over TVs and other sale items when an overwhelming majority can’t even afford to keep the rooves over their head, as evidenced by all of the boarded up homes and foreclosure signs all over the houses in Nassau and Southeast Queens?
http://valley-stream.nassau.ny.foreclosuredatabank.com/
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/nyregion/19block.html
It is so sad to know that human beings would stoop this low for “stuff” and reason to themselves that a human life was worth whatever they trampled this man for. I can’t think of a single thing in the store that was worth it. Lord, we need your help! We are a lost people and seem to stray further from your will and commandments each day. For those involved, I would hope that they turn themselves in and realize just what their carelessness, greed and obsession with material things has cost this man and his family.
Be safe this holiday season everyone….
Yes, this is a sad situation. People couldn’t wait for him to open the door so they had to stampede their way in to probably purchase something they couldn’t afford anyway?