I was a block away this morning hitting the Black Friday sales at Circuit City, Best buy and others in the area. Lines last year had formed from about 6pm the night before. This morning the crowds weren’t as bad, but probably 100-200 per store in line since 4am when Best Buy was supposed to open, but delayed until 5am.
The crowds continue to arrive upon opening at 5am for about 30 minutes as even though the crowd moved into the store steadily, the line remained as long outside, maybe 100yds long, 2-5 people wide. Very little street lighting in the area of the parking lots.
We noticed a number of high school to college aged minorities in the area, apparently not familiar with the streets. Over the past 2 years in this area, even where Gerald Ford used to live in Rancho Mirage, there have been several home invasions of upper middle class families and graffitti/tagging, marking territory of MS13 gangs.
Palm Desert is a very vast community ranging from many illegal aliens and Central American immigrants, up to multimillion dollar mansion neighborhoods in gated communities with institutional wealth. It is somewhat buffered between Palm Springs/Cathedral City/Rancho Mirage and Indian Wells/La Quinta/Indio. For those familiar with the movie, It’s a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World, Palm Desert is the desert city just below the opening scene of the movie where Jimmy Durante drives his car off the hairpin desert mountain road and then ‘kicks the bucket’.
The Toys R Us mentioned is on Hwy 111 , one of the closest shopping centers to the Annenburg Estate and Eisenhower Medical Center.
It’s a decent neighborhood with many of the more affordable rental duplexes for lower income families in the valley.
...Palm Desert Councilman Bob Spiegel told The Times that based on early reports, two rival groups shopping at the store had some kind of argument and then shots were fired. Two men were killed in the exchange of gunfire, he said.Sara Frahm, 25, of La Quinta, was shopping for electronic toys at the time of the shooting. She told The Times she heard two women fighting and swearing in an aisle next to her. She said employees went to break up the fight and that all of the sudden a number of people yelled, “He has a gun!” She said she heard six or seven shots.
Mike Stitt of Yucca Valley was shopping with his wife and two children when he saw two women fighting and calling each other names. Both were with men.
One of the men pulled out a gun and shot in in the air, then shot the other man in the back, Stitt told The Times.
In a statement, Toys R Us stressed the shooting appeared to stem from a "personal dispute."