Worker dies at Long Island Wal-Mart after being trampled in Black Friday stampede
BY JOE GOULD, CLARE TRAPASSO and RICH SCHAPIRO DAILY NEWS WRITERS
A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an "out-of-control" mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store's front doors and trampled him, police said.
The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.
When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.
"He was bum-rushed by 200 people," said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43.
"They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.
"They took me down, too ... I didn't know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back," Overby said.
Damour, a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens, was gasping for air as shoppers continued to surge into the store after its 5 a.m. opening, witnesses said.
Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.
"They pushed him down and walked all over him," Damour's sobbing sister, Danielle, 41, said.
"How could these people do that?
"He was such a young man with a good heart, full of life. He didn't deserve that."
Damour's sister said doctors told the family he died of a heart attack.
His cousin, Ernst Damour, called the circumstances "completely unacceptable."
"His body was a stepping bag with so much disregard for human life," Ernst Damour, 37, said.
"There has to be some accountability."
Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart's doors in the predawn darkness.
Chanting "push the doors in," the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.
Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.
It didn't work.
The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.
"They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door," said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn.
"Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over."
After the throng toppled Damour, his fellow employees had to fight through the crowd to help him, police said.
Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like "savages."
"When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!'" Cribbs said.
"They kept shopping."
When paramedics arrived, Damour's condition was grave.
"They were pumping his chest, trying to bring him back, and there was nothing," said Dennis Smokes, 36, a Wal-Mart worker.
Damour was taken to Franklin Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m.
Er, it WAS Friday morning.
Sick. I’m about a half hour from that place. Not the greatest of neighborhoods to begin with, which is why I stopped going to the Green Acres Mall, which is right next door, across the parking lot.
Are they gonna try for like 100+ Man 2 cases?
They sure burned down one man's house..
Probably never get indictments. But they should set up a “hall of shame” with closeups of as many faces as possible. With names, if known.
I doubt that they voted for McCain and Palin during the election.
Good luck with that.
Animals need to rot in hell.
There are animals,woops,people who saw this guy go down.
Fuzz need to look a credit card rcpts videos and slame some of the bastards with manslaughtet.....
Let em get a public defender and see what “change” is all about.
Sadly, I suspect that somehow this is going to end up being either “Bush’s Fault” or “Whitey’s Fault.” :(
I wonder how much merchandise was shoplifted while all this was going on.If they were trying to tear the doors off the hinges,I doubt if much of anything got payed for.
Mob mentality = diminished responsibility. Yes we can and the same mentality got someone elected. History, unlike the New York Courts will make us all pay for the election.
Their coveting runneth over. I always figured that made it to the top ten for a reason. Black Friday indeed.
Cops should have locked everyone in the store - line up on the wall - review the tape - picked out the perps.
What I saw was an exercise of raw black power
May he RIP.
America the beautiful.
Zero’s fault.
They can start by tracking down the holders of all of the credit cards that were processed for purchases during the first couple of hours after the murder. They won’t get everyone, and they may get some “innocents”, but hey, it was a mob, and if you are part of a mob then you are complicit with their behavior.