On the 28th of November, 2008, crowds began to gather outside the Walmart at the Green
Acres Mall in Valley Stream, New York. They had been drawn there by the promise of an
unmissable, limited-time Black Friday sale. As dawn approached, the crowd grew and grew
until it contained more than 2,000 people. They were there to shop… but before the
morning was over the crowd would have destroyed a storefront, killed an innocent man, and
contributed to the long and violent history of chaotic Black Friday sales.
Black Friday is the name given to the Friday after Thanksgiving in the United States. For
many decades now it has been traditional for retailers to run limited-time post-Thanksgiving
sales… and for consumers to turn out in force to take advantage of them. It’s a
big day for retailers, with more than $150 billion spent across the US in just a single
weekend. Even now, with most shopping taking place
online, retailers still work hard to get shoppers into stores by advertising incredible deals,
or releasing desirable products like new game consoles or limited edition sneakers on Black
Friday itself. There is a significant history of these promotions
ending in unrest, injury and even death. What happened at the Valley Stream Walmart in 2008
is one of the most unsettling examples of this.
On that particular Black Friday crowds had been gathering all night, with the first shoppers
arriving as early as 9:00pm the night before. These hardy bargain hunters camped out overnight
in order to be the first in line when Walmart opened its doors at 5:00am. They weren’t
few in number. By midnight the sidewalk outside the doors was full, and a line of shoppers
stretched across the car park of the Green Acres Mall.
Given the size of the crowd, police were called at around 3:30am, and attended to speak to
the crowd through loudhailers, appealing for calm and order. Relatively few officers were
still present as 5:00am approached, and the crowd was certainly not calm. They pounded
on the closed glass doors and pressed in a mass against them, causing them to bow visibly
inwards. The employees within the Walmart were, quite
naturally, wary. Many of them had witnessed Black Friday chaos in previous years. They
had seen people, including children, tripping and falling during crowd surges, fights breaking
out, and shoppers arguing and brawling over items.
34-year-old Jdimytai Damour, had probably heard some stories from his co-workers, but
had no idea just how intense the crowds could become. He was a temporary employee, and had
only been hired to cover the holiday season. He had spent Thanksgiving with his family,
and then come straight to work, expecting to spend most of his time stocking shelves
and carrying out maintenance. Instead, Mr Damour found himself on crowd
control duty. In an attempt to prevent the doors from breaking, employees pushed back
against them from the other side. They were still doing so until just before 5:00am, when
the doors shattered under the weight of the crowd, and a mob of shoppers surged inside.
Mr Damour was thrown to the floor and trampled by dozens of people, none of whom stopped
or expressed concern over the man they had stepped on. It was left to his colleagues,
some of whom had themselves been knocked to the ground by the surge, to fight their way
to him and try to help. While shoppers in the store fought over discount
household goods, an ambulance was called for Mr Damour. CPR was performed on scene, before
he was transported to a nearby hospital. Unfortunately his injuries were too severe, and he could
not be saved. His death left his colleagues reeling with
shock, and some attempts were made to clear the Walmart. The crowd however, having forced
its way inside, was unwilling to leave. When told what had happened and asked to go home,
several refused, arguing that they had been waiting in line in the cold all night, and
that they weren’t going to leave without getting what they’d come for.
In the aftermath of the incident, the shoppers involved were widely condemned by the media
and the public… but none faced any consequences. The incident had been so chaotic that it was
impossible to identify any individuals who could be considered responsible. Were those
pushing from the back of the crowd to blame, or was it the fault of those who had first
surged through the broken doors? No arrests were made, and no individual faced any consequences
for the loss of Jdimytai Damour’s life. Thankfully, deaths from trampling during Black
Friday sales are relatively rare. Injuries are common, but most are minor. When reporting
on Black Friday chaos many sources also include deaths and injuries which result from arguments
in and around retail outlets during the big day.
It’s completely commonplace for Black Friday shoppers to come to blows over limited stock,
coveted parking spaces, or when someone is seen to cut in line. Every Black Friday sees
scenes like these play out across the US. Sometimes, though, shoppers take things a
step further. In 2011 one woman shopping in a Walmart in
Los Angeles liberally pepper sprayed the crowd around a display of discount Xboxes, resulting
in around 20 people – children included – suffering painful but non-life-threatening
injuries. The shopper in question then calmly paid for
her purchases and left the store. After turning herself into the police a day later, she threatened
to sue Walmart for failing to provide adequate security – a situation which forced her
to resort to the pepper spray, she claimed. With not enough evidence to decide one way
or another if it was self-defence, the matter was dropped with no further legal consequences.
In 2016 in Vancouver, Canada, shoppers queued outside an Adidas Store for their chance to
purchase a limited edition shoe that was due to be released as part of a Black Friday promotion.
Before the doors could be opened, however, the crowd became violent. As fighting broke
out, one man removed his shirt, and began using his belt as a whip to keep other shoppers
at bay. He was promptly arrested, and the sale was cancelled outright.
In 2014, the madness that surrounds Black Friday was even seen overseas in the UK. In
Manchester police were called out to seven different Tesco supermarkets over the course
of the day to intervene in fights that had broken out, or to respond to members of the
public threatening staff. At one store a woman was injured by a falling television, and footage
of consumers fighting over discount television sets made headlines across the country.
It’s not just the UK that has adopted Black Friday as an annual event. Indeed, the idea
has spread around the world. Romania holds Black Friday sales a week before the US. In
Germany many retailers participate in an entire weeks of discounts under the banner of Black
Week or Black Shopping. Black Friday is a growing presence in Australia, Mexico, Canada,
Switzerland, and a steadily increasing number of European countries.
Interestingly, retailers in some countries participate in Black Friday under a different
name… often because the term “Black Friday” is already in common usage – usually as
the colloquial name for a disaster or other tragedy. In France, for example, these sales
are usually known as XXL Day rather than Black Friday, as Black Friday is a term used to
refer to terrorist attacks which took place in the country in 2015.
Whatever it’s called and wherever it takes place, Black Friday sales seem to almost always
create a certain amount of chaos and conflict. Most countries where the event has been promoted
have seen at least some scenes similar to those which take place in the US each year.
A violent struggle over electronic goods is, it seems, so essential a part of the day that
it transcends borders. Perhaps because of this tendency towards chaos,
some retailers have taken steps to move away from Black Friday. ASDA in the UK, for example,
has publically declared that it will prefer smaller sales spread out throughout the year
to one big weekend of deals, with an executive noting that they found footage of Black Friday
brawls “Uncomfortable”. Elsewhere, retailers have been moving online,
with a greater focus on Cyber Monday – the Monday after Thanksgiving, and a day when
retailers have started to offer massive discounts for online shoppers. When shopping online,
at least, there is little chance that anyone will be injured by falling stock, pepper sprayed
by fellow shoppers, drawn into a fistfight over a discount games console, or trampled
to death by a crowd.