Stampede, shots kill 3 in stores

Black Friday turned deadly at both ends of the country.

On Friday morning, a Wal-Mart worker was killed when “out-of-control” shoppers broke down the doors at a Long Island store’s 5 a.m. post-Thanksgiving sale. Other workers were trampled as they tried to rescue the man. Customers shouted angrily and kept shopping when store officials said they were closing because of the death, police and witnesses said.

Later Friday, two people were fatally shot in a crowded toy store in Palm Desert, Calif., in a confrontation that city officials said may have involved rival groups.

In the stampede at the Valley Stream, N.Y., Wal-Mart, at least four people were taken to hospitals for observation or minor injuries, including a woman who was eight months pregnant. Shoppers stepped over a fatally injured man on the ground and streamed into the store. When told to leave, they complained that they had been in line since Thursday morning.

Nassau County Police said about 2,000 people were gathered outside the store doors at the mall about 20 miles east of Manhattan. The impatient crowd knocked down the man, identified by police as Jdimytai Damour of Queens, as he opened the doors. A metal portion of the door frame was crumpled like an accordion in the onslaught.

“This crowd was out of control,” said Nassau County Police spokesman Lt. Michael Fleming. He described the scene as “utter chaos.”

Dozens of store employees trying to fight their way out to help Mr. Damour were also trampled by the crowd, Lt. Fleming said.

Mr. Damour “was bum-rushed by 200 people,” co-worker Jimmy Overby, 43, told the Daily News. “They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me. They took me down, too. … I literally had to fight people off my back.”

Items on sale at the store included a Samsung 50-inch plasma HDTV for $798, a Bissel compact upright vacuum for $28, a Samsung 10.2 megapixel digital camera for $69 and DVDs such as “The Incredible Hulk” for $9.

Mr. Damour, 34, was taken to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead about 6 a.m., police said. The exact cause of death was not immediately determined. A 28-year-old pregnant woman was taken to a hospital, where she and the baby were reported not in danger, said police Sgt. Anthony Repalone.

Police said criminal charges were possible in the case, but Lt. Fleming said it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers. Authorities were reviewing surveillance video.

Kimberly Cribbs, who witnessed the stampede, said shoppers were acting like “savages.”

“When [store management told them] they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling ‘I’ve been in line since yesterday morning,’” she said. “They kept shopping.”

Halcyon Alexander, 29, said store employees “were working on him, but you could see he was dead. People were still coming, through.”

Ellen Davis, a spokeswoman at National Retail Federation, said the group knew of no other incident in which a retail employee has died working on the day after Thanksgiving. Wal-Mart Stores Inc. in Bentonville, Ark., called the New York incident a “tragic situation” and said the employee came from a temporary agency and was doing maintenance work at the store.

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