Black Friday Madness: Stampede Kills Man, Pregnant Woman Miscarries in Valley Stream Walmart

@dlowan,

Agree, dlowan, at least on that last part.

I'm still tharning about the Primo Levi book, and it's semi hero, Cesare..

0 Replies

@Finn dAbuzz,

Finn dAbuzz wrote:

In any case, the family of the deceased employee, or his estate, will have a difficult time getting past the Exclusive Remedy doctrine in NY which holds that Workers Compensation is the only remedy for the injury or death of an employee in the scope of his or her employment.

We have the same principle in New Mexico, and it's darn hard to circumvent. Still, when temps come from an agency, they are employees of the employment agency, not Walmart. This might be a lever worth pulling.

1 Reply

@dlowan,

I don't think you can underrate, either, the effect of anonymity. The people in a mob behave differently because they are not under the eye of their community, the circle of their acquaintance. If the police move to identify those who trampled the gentleman is even partially successful, it may modify that behavior--at least to the extent that that circumstance becomes generally known.

But people definitely do behave differently in situations in which they are, essentially, anonymous.

2 Replies

@Setanta,

so true set...who would know that off these boards in real life I am actually a Pentecostal minister who resides in Appalachia?

0 Replies

@Setanta,

Indeed.

Humans be weird.

0 Replies

This is why I don't go out. Stupid people fighting over a $20 sweater. Rolling Eyes

0 Replies

In response to the tragedy, Wal-Mart is encouraging all of its employees to arm themselves.

http://www.crystalair.com/stories/200812/200812001b.jpg

0 Replies

My husband is a manager at Walmart. Trust me, someone will bring a lawsuit and Walmart will settle out of court. They are notorious for lawsuits being filed against them and they settle out of court. Most of the suits are slip and falls from what my husband tells me.

I don't think Walmart is responsible for this person dying BUT for them to open the store up? Just shows what money grabbing greedy people they are. I don't have much respect for the people who didn't care that a man just died because they wanted to save a buck and I pray those extra cameras can identify these stampeding shoppers.

And people don't think our world is in pitiful shape?

2 Replies

What has society come to?

This is consumerism at its lowest.

0 Replies

@Arella Mae,

Quote:

I don't think Walmart is responsible for this person dying BUT for them to open the store up? Just shows what money grabbing greedy people they are. I don't have much respect for the people who didn't care that a man just died because they wanted to save a buck and I pray those extra cameras can identify these stampeding shoppers.

I am not confident that I have the full story, but reports are the the consensus of the employees was that the store should not open, so that grieving and understanding could take place. Supposedly the managers told them no. It was only after the managers were strongly encouraged by the authorities to close that they agreed. I was previously against the closing, because I thought that the police wanted it to make their job easier. If the employees felt that being open was inapproapriate and a hardship on them then the management should have listened, and done so.

I am waiting for more info before I make my mind up on the closing aspect of this story.

0 Replies

@Arella Mae,

Arella Mae wrote:

My husband is a manager at Walmart. Trust me, someone will bring a lawsuit and Walmart will settle out of court. They are notorious for lawsuits being filed against them and they settle out of court. Most of the suits are slip and falls from what my husband tells me.

They pay by the case instead of by the hour and go to court more often than most companies as a result.

0 Replies

@Slappy Doo Hoo,

According to the reports at LEAST 12 employees tried in vain to get to this man as the crowds just kept on coming and trampling. How tragic and so frustrating.

0 Replies

My guess as to what happened....

People twenty feet back from the front of the line could never see what was going on at the front and just kept pushing and the people in front were trying to get out of the way quickly enough so that THEY didn't get trampled. Somebody needed to think several tads harder than they did.

1 Reply

@gungasnake,

Probably true.
One of my employees recounted a story about being near the door to a rock concert in his youth with a big crowd behind him. The doors opened and he, who is perhaps is 5'9" tall, found himself in the air, being swept along in the surge. A total stranger ahead of him, a very large guy with a football player's build, picked up his own girl-friend and my employee climbed up the guy's back. They managed to ride the guy to a side aisle.

1 Reply

@realjohnboy,

Yeah.

Once while entering an italian subway station, I forget where, but it was a very long set of steps, I rode the whole way down between other people without my feet touching the steps. That was a lesson about timing my subway rides for non rush hour.

1 Reply

@ossobuco,

Fascinating, that was the description of why Napoleon lost his Imperial Guard at Waterloo: the horses of the "Immortels" were so tightly deployed in such a very narrow front that some horses' hooves never touched the ground. They were carried on the sides of cavalry on either side of them.

On the subject of Walmart - truly I find incredible, and profoundly contemptible, the opinionating here before anyone has read the autopsy results on how the temporary security man died. He weighed over 300 pounds and was dead of a heart attact before he touched the ground.

He didn't die of getting trampled under; if anything, the people who stepped over him have a claim against WalMart for permitting this obese dead body to block the entranceway. Watch the DA's office announcements - some of these shoppers have already sued; and most of all, get FACTS before opinionating!

1 Reply

@High Seas,

Quote:

get FACTS before opinionating

we have facts, in the statements of the police department which was at the scene before the doors were broken by the crush of the mob, as well as after. The fact that the man died of a heart attack and not from crushing does not matter, the heart attack was from the stress of being in a situation that was out of control, and it was out of control because walmart did not due what it needed to do to secure the site. We also have accounts which are not in dispute that as this man was in the event he was walked on, and that fellow employees had great difficulty getting to him.

It makes sense to me that the shoppers would sue, walmart ran an out of control event, lives were needlessly endanged, shoppers should sue.

1 Reply

@hawkeye10,

actually

Quote:

An autopsy showed that Damour died of asphyxiation after being trampled, Nassau County officials have said

http://www.cnn.com/2008/CRIME/12/02/walmart.trampling.suit/index.html

1 Reply

Quote:

GARDEN CITY, N.Y. - The family of a worker trampled to death in a "Black Friday" crush of bargain hunters at a Long Island Wal-Mart store filed a wrongful-death lawsuit on Wednesday, claiming store ads offering deep discounts "created an atmosphere of competition and anxiety" that led to "crowd craze."

The lawsuit claims that besides failing to provide adequate security for a pre-dawn crowd estimated at 2,000, Wal-Mart "engaged in specific marketing and advertising techniques to specifically attract a large crowd and create an environment of frenzy and mayhem and was otherwise careless, reckless and negligent."

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/28034543/

0 Replies

@hawkeye10,

Saw that, Hawkeye. Preliminary autopsy results were of a heart attack, not asphyxiation. Are the 2 simultaneous, or does one follow the other? And does obesity relate to incidence of heart attacks with frequency comparable to asphyxiation? Sorry I don't know anything about medicine - if you do, please reply. Tks.

0 Replies

Black Friday Madness: Stampede Kills Man, Pregnant Woman Miscarries in Valley Stream Walmart

Related Topics

Quick Links

My Account

able2know