Cops on Fatal L.I. Wal-Mart Stampede: "This Crowd Was Out of Control"

The Wal-Mart worker killed during yesterday's morning Black Friday sale stampede at the Valley Stream store was identified as 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour of Jamaica, Queens. Newsday reports that the Wal-Mart entrance doors were broken down by a restless crowd of 2,000 shoppers--many of whom had been waiting for hours--as workers were getting the store ready for the 5 a.m. opening. Damour, a temporary worker hired for the holidays, was pushed to the ground and trampled. Detective Lieutenant Michael Fleming, who is investigating the death, said, "This crowd was out of control," and "They overran him and kept running into the store. They pushed right over his body."

The Post suggests that the crowd became unruly because the store didn't open exactly at 5 a.m., and according to the Daily News, before the opening, "Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers."

Shopper Nakea Augustine, who took photographs of the mass of people, said, "Nobody was trying to help him. They were rushing in the store, rushing, rushing, rushing." A cop said that cops performing CPR on Damour were also stepped on by shoppers. Another shopper said that Wal-Mart employees' pleas to shoppers were ignored, "When they were saying [shoppers] had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, 'I've been on line since Friday morning!' They kept shopping."

While Wal-Mart called Damour's death a "tragic situation," Local 1500 of the United Food and Commercial Workers had a comment (Wal-Mart does not have union workers). Local 1500 president Bruce Both asked the NY Times, “Where were the safety barriers? Where was security? How did store management not see dangerous numbers of customers barreling down on the store in such an unsafe manner? This is not just tragic; it rises to a level of blatant irresponsibility by Wal-Mart.”

Det. Lt. Fleming also called the chaos "foreseeable." Damour's friends and family told Newsday that he "was an easygoing, helpful man who loved poetry." A friend also said Damour, who had done construction work, "was a big man and had no apparent health problems."