The funny (weird) thing is, I was down in Long Island on that day. We even went out shopping on Black Friday. I’d never wait in line even for twenty minutes to get into a store, and we went around 10 AM. Every store we went to was fairly calm. It looked like a busy shopping day.
We went to TJ Maxx, Trader Jo’s, Macy’s, and then to Costco. The only one that was remotely busy was Costco.
I see on Google Maps that Valley Stream is about 40 minutes from Huntington. I’m not really sure where the shops are we went to, but I know they weren’t far from Huntington.
I was really surprised at how empty the stores were. And then we got home and read it in the paper. Wow.
An absolutely appalling event, but I can’t say I’m all that surprised. I think on some level I’ve been waiting for something of the sort ever since I heard about the Cabbage Patch riots when I was a kid. (It’s a weird experience as a 10 year old to look at a group of adults and think “Geez, it’s just a doll. Grow up, already.”)
The location really shocked me, though. I mean, it’s fucking New York, a place where people crow about all the amazing shopping opportunities. What on earth are all these people doing at Walmart?
I didn’t hear about the riots until I got older, thank god-just that the dolls were hard to get. (I got MY CPK from England, where my Uncle was vacationing. )
I did hear on the news yesterday morning while getting ready for work is that they’re trying to find the culprits-or at least, locate shoppers who were there, even though it’s likely they’ll never know who exactly delivered the fatal blow.
(One wonders, though, if it could have been someone who was shoved along with the crowd, and was unable to move, as the pregnant woman who was hospitalized proved)
Did Wal-Mart even SELL anything to anyone, anyways? Some people have mentioned credit card slips, but I highly doubt they’d let anyone buy anything!
The crowd is agitated into a hightened aggressive state by the marketing technique used. The folks up front may have been pressed from behind by the folks who cannot see what may be the delay in getting inside.
Even though I, too, feel that the crowd should have been civil enough not to be pushing and shoving, it’s hard for me to imagine what any one single person could do to successfully stem a mob surge. All you can do is get out of the way, right?
As such, I dunno if any criminal charges against the shoppers is possible.
It’s sad, too, reading about some of the shoppers comments when they were asked to leave (because the store was closing). No empathy whatsoever. And because no one will be held accountable for anything, there is no “lesson” to be learned, no reason to adopt any empathy.
I dunno how much control corporate exerts over each individual store, it’s marketing, and the security. Did the store manager screw up, or was he merely following corporate procedures?
WalMart’s sales events went off without deaths pretty much everywhere else…
I didn’t read every post in here…apologies if I missed it, but did this remind anybody else of this?
On December 3, 1979, the Riverfront Coliseum in Cincinnati, Ohio, was the site of one of the worst rock concert tragedies in United States history. Eleven fans were killed and several dozen others injured in the rush for seating at the opening of a sold-out concert by The Who. The concert was using festival seating. When the crowds waiting outside heard the band performing a soundcheck, they thought the concert was beginning and tried to rush into the still-closed doors, trampling those at the front of the crowd.
Valley Stream (so nice to see where I grew up come up in such a pleasant discussion!) is right on the border with Queens. The Green Acres Mall tends to gather it’s clientele mostly from Queens, which is going to be a much larger population to draw from than Huntington. Huntington may as well be another country.
This mall has a history of violence and crime, so this came as no surprise to me. I grew up half a mile away and never went to the movie theater in that mall.
In all fairness to New York, this happened on Long Island, which is notoriously (by their own admission) separate from Manhattan. Of course I’m speaking in general terms, but most people on Long Island are content with not going “into the city” on a regular basis, and prefer their suburban lifestyle.
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