So in Australia, we don't have Black Friday. We do have massive sales and people line up outside and get psyched and this that and the other. I don't really know why when you have a world of online shopping and delivery, but apparently in the United States you guys seem to have something called Black Friday and if the media is to be believed, insanity is king during this time and brings us two stories today, one from the safe area of Los Angeles, California and the other from Buckeye, Arizona.

The first takes place on Black Friday as Alejandra Seminario, a 24 year old shopper, as reports say, not really sure why they didn't describe them as anything else, but okay. Alejandra was waiting in line for children's toys when things got ugly fast in a Wal-Mart. The incident in question was sparked when a hundred people grabbing at all the toys around the shopper and then someone pulled out the pepper spray.

Why? 

No one is particularly sure, but the woman began to pepper spray people to defend the toys she had gotten probably hoping to calm people down. Pepper Spray always does that sort of thing.

Seminario says that it really just exacerbated the problem as it triggered people "screaming, pulling and pushing each other" as the whole area "filled up with pepper spray", all because she pulled it out and started spraying. People started to pull the "plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games."

After the spray cleared, the 20 people caught in the cloud, weren't seriously harmed, and the woman claimed self-defense, although apparently she'd used the pepper spray multiple times in the same store on the same day and was actually using it as an antogonistic tactic to get past people to "gain access to a variety of locations in the store", as an LA Fire Captain, James Carson, put it.

Now meanwhile in another Wal-Mart, one state over, a grandfather was accused of shoplifting and ended up being beaten and thrown to the floor during a Black Friday sale. The 54-year-old man, Jerald Newman, placed a video game in the waistband of his trousers, an officer noticed this and approached him, accused him, clapped on the cuffs and then pushed the old man to the floor.

There is a video of the incident online but I'd prefer if you didn't watch it, as it's quite graphic and has Newman collapsed on the floor, pretty much unable to breath because he is choking on his own blood. 

Reports are hazy and coming out slowly saying that Jerald put the game in his pants because he was freeing up his hands to pick up his grandson from being trampled, others are saying it's because there were no baskets left in the shop, either way, it's a tragedy. To be unfair for everyone involved, Newman had had no prior convictions, but was charged with shoplifting and resisting arrest after being treated in a hospital before being relesaed from jail on Saturday morning.

So I'm wondering, like most people who've picked up the story on what the game was and what your initial reaction would have been to the Arizona story. I think we can all agree that the LA story wasn't really vidya related but still noteworthy, I do have to say good show for Newman as I don't think anyone would want to play any game cover that smelt like old man balls...yeah I'm gonna leave this story on that image.

Via [CNN] & [LATimes]

Tweet

60% of voters think this story ROCKS!

Vote Now!    (3) (2)