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.
This is the reason I go shopping at WM at 3 in the morning. The only thing I have to worry about are the pallets and forklifts. The stockers are friendly and I have help at the drop of a hat.
No, the only thing that could have been done is to get on the PA and announce that the store was closed, there would be no checkout, and that the riot squad was outside to deal with any shoplifters or looters.
Please, let’s stop calling these people Thanksgiving shoppers. Have you seen the photos?
They WERE NOT shopping. They are thugs with the gang/mob mentality — that they wanted what they wanted — regardless of what damage or injury they did.
They are subhuman and thugs and criminals of the worse order.
There was a 50% off sale at a thrift store when I lived in Atlanta. The store was closed while they organized everything and there was a small indentation into the wall where the glass sliding doors where (it was a grocery store previously). There was such a crowd of people there clamoring to be the first in the door that they were pushing forward. I was crushed against the glass, my face smushed and it was getting hard to breath being wedged up against the glass. I was banging on the door in a panic to get the employees to open them, but I guess they thought I was just some crazy shopper who wanted to get in to get theh deals. I only wanted some cheap towels, I didn’t know it was going to be like this! At a thrift store! It was finally time to open and I almost fell down when they opened the doors because of all the pressure behind me. If I hadn’t of swooped around the corner once getting inside, I would have fell and probably been trampled. As it was, I don’t think I would have lasted much longer trying to breath being pressed up against the glass.
This is another reason I will never go to a Black Friday sale. That and my best friend getting a black eye from a 90 old lady in Walmart over a DVD player.
And people wonder why we don’t make laws in mob rule form.
DANG, the economy must be bad, if people are killing each other to get in the door. /sac
They all figure they have more disposable income this year,they think beginning January 20th the chosen one will be paying for their gas and their mortgages.
Good luck identifying them. And aint none of em is gonna talk to the man.
The only way to prevent this from happening is to prevent the crowd from massing in front of an exit or entry, the correct crowd control strategy is to funnel the crowd between barriers until it is reduced down to single lines of individuals. This is not a perfect strategy, but if the "funnel" is long enough it's quite effective.
Any venue which routinely experiences crowds seeking entry (for example sporting and entertainment events) has a security staff and procedures in place to deal with this even if the crowds are impatient or unruly, the problem here is either the crowd was unanticipated or that the venue was unfamiliar with crowd control.
The problem is that the people who knocked him down may not have really been to blame.
Anyone who has ever been at a concert where there was a stage rush knows that it’s the people behind the ones in front that cause the problem. I was at a show in 1989 where a girl fell in front of me and it was only good luck for her that she didn’t get trampled.
I can’t understand why the cops didn’t seal the exits and get ID and statements from every single “customer” inside. Everyone inside that store (other than workers) was a homicide suspect and should have been treated as such.
Sick. Just sick. I will never go and cue in a Black Friday line. I can get things online from somewhere at the same, better, or a close enough price. You ain’t getting me up at 3AM on a day off to get in line with a bunch of animals. This is mindless consumerism gone mad.
I hope they find every stinkin’ one of them and prosecute. I know some were (hopefully) carried by the crowd and unable to avoid it...but this is absolute insanity.
and just where was the president-elect Obama during this? Did he fall asleep at the wheel? Just what did he know and when did he know it? This is just another example of a failed future presidency.
Convictions will be impossible due to the weakness of proving intent to commit a crime.
Besides, they are 100% Obama voters, and hence immune from prosecution.