#9 - Isidro Zarate
39-year old Isidro Zarate of San Antonio, Texas, took a trip to Walmart with his wife, Lisa
Benavides, on November the 25th of 2016. It being Black Friday, the parking lot was filled to the
brim with eager shoppers. Zarate dropped his wife off at the front of the store and proceeded to
circle the lot while she was inside. As he awaited her return, he noticed a man attacking a woman.
The assailant was later identified as 21-year-old Teles Mandan Juarez, who had grabbed his victim
by the hair and was punching her repeatedly. It’s unclear if there was any connection between them.
Zarate pulled up in his vehicle and pleaded with him to stop. Juarez did let go of the woman,
but only to reach for the firearm he was carrying. He fired multiple shots in Zarate’s direction,
striking the Good Samaritan in the neck and killing him. A stray bullet also hit a bystander,
though her injuries were not life-threatening. Juarez swiftly fled the scene but was eventually
tracked down by San Antonio police, 10 miles from the Walmart. He was arrested and sentenced
to life in prison. #8 - Nadia Ezaldein
On November the 28th of 2014, Nadia Ezaldein was working a shift at the Nordstrom’s store,
in the River North neighborhood of Chicago, Illinois. On that day, Black Friday had coincided
with Ezaldein’s 22nd birthday. Her family had planned a surprise party for the young woman
after she got off of work. Unfortunately, Ezaldein never made it home that night. She was shot by
31-year-old Marcus Dee, an ex-boyfriend who had been stalking her for several months.
After shooting Ezaldein, he turned the weapon on himself. Ezaldein was transported to Northwestern
Memorial Hospital, but ultimately succumbed to her gunshot wounds. The Nordstrom’s was packed full of
Black Friday shoppers who watched in horror as Dee carried out the killing and then ended his life.
To add to the tragedy, the gun that Dee had used, had been falsely reported stolen by Nina Dones
and then bought by Dee, who wasn’t allowed to purchase a gun due to mental illness.
Dones was prosecuted for disorderly conduct for filing a false police report, a class four felony.
#7 - The Sacramento Mall Shooting
On November the 27th of 2020, Black Friday shoppers at the Arden Fair Mall, in Sacramento,
California, were startled by a sudden eruption of gunfire. Employees at the mall reported
hearing roughly a dozen gunshots echoing through the establishment, at around 6 pm.
Two brothers were killed in the shooting. Dewayne James Jr., aged 19, and Sa’Quan Reed-James,
aged 17, were fired on by 18-year-old Damario Beck at a bank outside the mall following a verbal
altercation. Dewayne was dead by the time authorities arrived at the scene,
while Sa’Quan was transported to a nearby hospital, ultimately passing away hours later. As
they heard the sound of gunfire, shoppers looking to take advantage of Black Friday deals started
collectively fleeing for their lives. Large crowds of people flooded into the back rooms of various
stores in an effort to hide from the shooter. Fortunately, no one else was injured that night.
Within a week of the incident, Beck was charged with the murders of the two James brothers.
#6 - Patrick Henry Boyd
On November the 29th of 2013, Patrick Henry Boyd of Clover,
South Carolina, took four of his friends on a Black Friday shopping excursion to Concord, North
Carolina. The group set out in the early hours of Friday morning in an effort to avoid the massive
Black Friday crowds. It was still quite early in the day when they finished up their shopping
and got back out on the road to return home. Unfortunately, because he’d gotten little rest,
Boyd ended up falling asleep behind the wheel of the Honda Accord that carried him and his
four passengers. The car drifted off the road and collided into a sign in front of a gas station.
Boyd was killed on impact, while all four of his friends were subsequently taken to the hospital,
with two of them having suffered serious injuries. One of the passengers later told
police that Boyd had complained he was too tired to drive prior to losing control of the vehicle.
#5 - The Reno Walmart Shooting
Black Friday shoppers arrived in huge numbers at a Walmart parking lot in Reno, Nevada,
on November the 24th of 2016. There was an overflow of cars in the lot, which meant the
number of available spaces was low and the tension between frustrated drivers was high. 33-year-old
Matthew McGraw became enraged after another car cut him off to claim a parking spot. He got out
of his vehicle and angrily confronted the other driver. What started out as a verbal argument
rapidly devolved into physical violence as McGraw proceeded to strike the driver with a metal baton,
smashing his windshield and bruising his face. The driver then grabbed his firearm and shot McGraw
through the window, killing him. Believing his life to still be in danger, the driver
fled the scene, though he fully cooperated with the authorities during the investigation that
followed. The police determined that he’d acted in self-defense and they decided not to charge him.
#4 - Nisha and Sheetal Tandel
Arvind Tandel, a father-of-four from Palo Alto, California, was charged with two
counts of vehicular manslaughter following a traffic accident that claimed the lives of two
of his own children. 48-year-old Tandel, his wife, and his four daughters, aged
12 to 24, were travelling in his Lexus SUV after a busy day of Black Friday shopping,
on November the 23rd of 2012. The four siblings had been crammed into the back of the vehicle
in order for the family’s purchases to fit in the middle row. There were only three seats in the
back, and 24-year-old Nisha and 20-year-old Sheetal weren’t wearing their seatbelts.
Tandel, who was driving, had only gotten 3 hours of sleep the previous night and started
showing signs of fatigue. He was drifting in and out of the painted highway lanes and
gradually grew nearer to the right-hand shoulder. Meanwhile, a California Highway Patrol officer
sat in his cruiser, which was parked inside the shoulder. He’d been assisting a couple who was
struggling with a flat tire. Tandel’s SUV plowed into the rear of the police car and flipped over,
rolling as many as 7 times before coming to a halt. Everyone involved in the collision was
taken to the hospital with injuries. The police officer was about to exit his vehicle when the
crash occurred. Had he’d done so, he would’ve undoubtedly been killed, but he instead suffered
wounds that weren’t deemed life-threatening. Nisha and Sheetal Tandel were both ejected
from the SUV during the accident. The former was pronounced dead at the scene, while Sheetal passed
away at the hospital. Arvind Tandel was charged following his daughters’ deaths, but the Santa
Clara county District Attorney chose not to seek jail time in the resulting court proceedings.
#3 - Walter Vance
A Target in Logan County, West Virginia was overrun by Black Friday shoppers,
on November the 25th of 2011. As the customers stampeded through the store, 61-year-old Walter
Vance was caught in the chaos and collapsed to the ground. He suffered from a heart condition
and went into cardiac arrest amidst the pandemonium. Even as he lay helplessly on the
floor, frantic shoppers largely ignored him. Some even stepped over the suffering man to continue
shopping. There were nurses at the scene and they eventually came to Vance’s aid, performing
CPR until paramedics arrived. Unfortunately, Vance passed away at the hospital. It’s unclear
whether his chances of survival would’ve improved if someone had helped him sooner.
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#2 - Jdimytai Damour
Just before 5 am, on Black Friday, 2008, a Walmart in Long Island, New York, prepared
to open its doors to the public. Before doing so, however, store employees formed a human barricade,
just inside the entrance, to preemptively slow down the flow of shoppers waiting on the sidewalk
outside. There were roughly 2,000 people in total awaiting Walmart’s opening. Once
the doors were finally unlocked, the mass of customers spilled into the store, trampling over
the helpless employees fruitlessly trying to slow them down. Among the workers knocked to the ground
was 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, who gasped for air as the reckless mob continued to crush him.
Many of his co-workers attempted to come to his aid, but they had to fight off a
seemingly endless influx of shoppers to get to him. Paramedics were called to the scene,
but even first responders found it difficult to perform CPR on Damour without getting stepped on
and knocked about by the crowd of people. Even after Damour had passed away, on the floor of
the Walmart, shoppers continued their frenzied search for discounted items. The entrance doors
to the store were ripped from their hinges during the rampage, and four other people were injured,
including a woman who was eight months pregnant. Police struggled to find any individual they could
hold criminally accountable, after examining the store’s surveillance tapes. Walmart itself
was fined a mere $7,000 for failing to provide the store with adequate security measures.
#1 - Ashlea Harris
In the early morning hours of November the 28th of 2014, the assistant manager of an American
Eagle store, in Fort Worth, Texas, went home after working an overnight Black Friday shift.
It was roughly 3 a.m. when Ashlea Harris got back to her apartment and a friend of
hers stopped by for a brief visit. The meet-up marked the last time Harris was ever seen alive.
Soon after her friend’s departure, the 31-year-old store manager was accosted by
two former employees of hers, 25-year-old Carter Cervantez and her boyfriend Clarence Mallory,
aged 19. Both Cervantez and Mallory had previously been fired from Harris’ American Eagle location,
after being suspected of stealing $18,000 from the store’s safe. The two assailants
came to Harris’ apartment and proceeded to beat her. They bound her hands and feet then
set her body and the house on fire. They took her store keys with the intention of breaking
in and stealing the Black Friday profits, which were projected to have been around $50,000.
Firefighters responding to a fire alarm arrived at Harris’ apartment, hours after the attack, and
discovered her body. Cervantez and Mallory were later arrested and charged with capital murder.
During their trials, Harris’ neighbor testified to hearing screams and crashes coming from her
apartment that night. He saw a black Infiniti G35, which was later identified as Cervantez’s car,
driving away from the scene after the door to Harris’ apartment had been slammed shut. The
two disgruntled former employees were also caught on the American Eagle surveillance CCTV cameras
trying to unlock the doors to the store, at 2 am the following morning. After it
was discovered that Harris’ keys had been taken from her apartment, the store changed its locks,
so Cervantez and Mallory were unsuccessful in their attempts to gain access to the safe.
Both of them were sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Thanks for watching! Would you rather have to work at a busy store on Black Friday or have to
work the graveyard shift at a store in the middle of nowhere? Let us know in the comments below!