As anxious Black Friday shoppers swarm sale
stores to nab post-Thanksgiving
deals, fights and hot tempers mar holiday
shopping and lead to injuries,
arrests across the country
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A young cashier is attended to by medics after
passing out during a Black
Friday sale at a Dick's Sporting Goods store in
Kansas City, Missouri.
Black Friday turned bloody for a Washington
couple who were run down by an
alleged drunk driver in the parking lot of a
Walmart on Thursday night,
cops said.
The near-death scrape was just one of a handful
of cases of retail madness
that occurred at stores across the country on
Thursday night and Friday
morning, as punishing lines and frenzied crowds
tested the nerves of
bargain-hungry buyers.
In one case, a shopper reportedly pulled a gun
on a man who tried to cut in
line. In another incident, two people were shot
and wounded in front of a
Tallahassee Walmart, apparently in a dispute
over a parking space.
At other Walmarts, labor protests just added to
the strain.
The Washington accident happened as bargain
hunters rushed for once-a-year
deals at the big box retailer in Covington,
some 30 miles south of Seattle,
at around 8 p.m. KING-5 TV reported.
The 71-year-old driver hit the couple, who are
in their 40s, with his SUV
as they walked toward the store, in full view
of horrified shoppers,
authorities said.
The man rolled up over the hood, while his
girlfriend became pinned
underneath the vehicle, authorities said.
After firefighters pulled her from beneath the
car, the woman was flown to
Harborview Medical Center in Seattle, where she
was reported in serious
condition with a hip injury, the station
reported.
King5.com
An officer peers under the SUV that hit a
couple in their 40s at a Walmart
parking lot in Washington state on Thursday
night. The woman who was hit
became pinned under the car, cops said.
The man was driven by ambulance to the same
hospital. He was in good
condition after suffering a head injury,
authorities said.
King’s County Sheriff’s Sgt. Cindi West said
the driver had been drinking.
He was arrested on suspicion of vehicular
assault and taken to a hospital
to have his blood drawn, the station reported.
Neither the driver nor the victims were
identified beyond their ages.
In Tallahassee, witnesses say a man and woman
were shot in broad daylight
while standing on a sidewalk outside a
Walmart. Police were looking for
the shooter in a violent incident apparently
spurred by a dispute over a
parking space, WCTV reported. The victims have non-life threatening
injuries, the station reported.
"It's scary. Especially in front of a
store where people can get hurt, you
know. It's scary and it's stupid," shopper
John Williams told the station.
Elsewhere the stresses of the year’s biggest
shopping opportunity drove
several to retail raucousness -- though none of
the early incidents were on
the scale of last year’s pepper spray attack at
a Walmart in Los Angeles or
the trampling death of a Walmart employee in
Long Isand in 2008.
News 13 Florida
Samantha Chavez, 28, was arrested at a Walmart
in Altamonte Springs, Fla.,
near Orlando on Thursday night, after causing
trouble in line and getting
pushy with officers trying to direct traffic,
police said.
At a Sears store in San Antonio, Tex., a
shopper pulled a gun on a man
after the man tried to cut in line, the San
Antonio Express News reported.
Cops said the two got in an argument at the
South Park mall store after the
shopper confronted the man for allegedly
cutting the line sometime after 8
p.m. on Thursday night.
The line-cutter mouthed off and then punched
the shopper in the face, the
newspaper reported.
The man who was punched responded by pulling a
pistol, police said.
Terrified shoppers scattered, and the alleged
line-cutter hid behind a
fridge before fleeing the store, the newspaper
said.
“It kind of went a little crazy in there,” San
Antonio Police Sgt. Rob
Carey told the newspaper.
The gun-toting shopper wasn't charged because
he had a permit to carry the
weapon, cops told the Express News.
The store did not close, and shopping resumed
shortly after the incident.
At a Dick's Sporting Goods in Kansas City, Mo.,
a young cashier became
overwhelmed by the mania and passed out at her
post, according to photos
posted to Twitter.
The photos, tweeted by user Stevie Hendrix,
showed the stricken young
worker lying on the ground and then getting
carried out on a stretcher by
medics.
"No one cared, it was kind of sad, they
just wanted their stuff," Hendrix
tweeted.
Witnesses at a south Philadelphia Walmart said
a fistfight broke out in the
electronics section as buyers argued over $200
television sets, Philly.com
reported.
A few shoppers were knocked to the ground
during the 8 p.m. dust up, the
witnesses said, but no one was arrested, the
site reported.
A similar incident was reported in Michigan,
where two shoppers were
arrested at mall in Kentwood, south of Grand
Rapids, after trading blows
outside a JC Penney store at 1:30 a.m., local
WOOD-TV reported.
Authorities told the station that cops who
responded to that fight needed
pepper spray to subdue the angry shoppers.
News 8 Michigan
At least two people were arrested at a mall in
Kentwood, Mich., following a
fight.
In Florida, a 28-year-old woman was arrested at
a Walmart in Altamonte
Springs, near Orlando, after cops said she
caused trouble in line outside
the store and then got pushy with an officer
directing traffic inside.
Video broadcast on Central Florida’s 13 News,
showed Samantha Chavez, 28,
writhing and screaming on the ground as two
officers knelt on her back and
cuffed her.
“Please stop! I didn’t do anything!” Chavez
screams, as a crowd of stunned
shoppers looks on.
News 13 Florida
Mugshot of Samantha Chavez, who was arrested at
a Walmart near Orlando, Fla.
In another disturbing video that surfaced early
Friday, hordes of shoppers
at a Walmart in Moultrie, Ga., nearly rioted over a stash of prepaid cell
phones.
The scene became a human feeding frenzy, with
shoppers screaming and
clawing past one another to get to the gadgets,
the video showed.
In a statement, Walmart called the incident
"unfortunate," saying the
phones' unlimited usage deal lead to
"excitement" among shoppers.
No one was injured, and security guards were on
hand to calm the customers,
Walmart said.
In Massachusetts, police arrested a man who
allegedly left his girlfriend's
2-year-old son behind in a car while he shopped
for flat screen TVs, and
then went home with a television, but not the
kid.
Police found the boy asleep in the car in a
Kmart parking lot in
Springfield at around 1:30 a.m Friday.
When cops tracked down the man later at his
house, he told them he had lost
the boy, panicked and called another friend for
a lift home, The Associated
Press reported.
The 34-year-old was expected to be charged with
reckless endangerment to a
child.
Another youth in Maryland was also a Black
Friday victim. A group of five
men robbed a 14-year-old boy of his shopping bag
outside a suburban
Baltimore mall after he walked out of a Bed
Bath & Beyond store around 2
a.m., Anne Arundel County Police said.
Video published on YouTube and other sites on
Friday showed shoppers
shoving and screaming near a display case of
unidentified gadgets at a
Walmart said to be in Georgia.
In some cases, retailers were taking emergency
steps to curtail the mayhem.
At the Mall of America in Minneapolis, teens
were barred from shopping all
day on Friday unless they accompanied by a
parent or an adult.
Mall officials said they hoped the policy would
cut back on crowding.
“Last year we experienced a large influx of
youth, more than we had
anticipated," and many were just hanging
out, megamall spokeswoman Bridget
Jewel told The Pioneer Press newspaper.
“We don't want it to turn into a place for
people to come and hang out."
Last year, more than 219,000 people visited the
mall on Black Friday, she
said.
"We'd never had that many people in our
building on one day," Jewell told
the newspaper, adding the mall was planning on
banning unattended teens
during the week between Christmas and New
Year’s as well.
Black Friday shoppers at Macy's department
store in New York. As of Friday
morning, there didn't appear to be any major
violent incidents on the scale
of the two shootings or the pepper spray attack
that occurred on Black
Friday in 2011.
In Rockville, Il., police were twice called to
the CherryVale mall early
Friday for reports of fighting. Two men were
hosptialized and two in
custody, WREX-TV reported.
Meanwhile, in Los Angeles, the LAPD took
matters into their own hands,
deploying dozens of extra officers around the
city on Friday, the Los
Angeles Times reported.
"For some people, shopping is a
competitive sport," LAPD Commander Andy
Smith told the newspaper. "But it should
not be a contact sport."
In other cases, though, it was the workers, not
the shoppers, making news.
Walmart workers in cities across the U.S.
staged walkouts beginning on
Thursday night to protests against what they
said was low pay and poor
benefits, according to reports.
The exact number of workers and Walmarts
involved was not clear, but a
website for OUR Walmart, an employee group,
listed nearly a dozen cities
where rallies would take place, including
Miami, Chicago, Washington, D.C.,
Milwaukee and Los Angeles.
An arrest was reported at one of these
“Occupy-style” protests at a Walmart
in Portland, where around three dozen people
gathered beneath a sign that
said “Walkout on Walmart” and handed out flyers
that said "Free stampede
after giving thanks for what you have,"
The Oregonian reported.
Jer 10:2
Thus saith the LORD, Learn not the way of the heathen, and be not
dismayed at the signs of heaven; for the
heathen are dismayed at them.
Jer 10:3
For the customs of the people [are] vain:
Amo 5:21 ¶I hate, I despise your feast days,
and I will not smell in your
solemn assemblies.
Amo 5:22
Though ye offer me burnt offerings and your meat offerings, I
will not accept [them]: neither will I regard
the peace offerings of your
fat beasts.
Amo 5:23
Take thou away from me the noise of thy songs; for I will not
hear the melody of thy viols.
Amo 5:24
But let judgment run down as waters, and righteousness as a
mighty stream.
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