New York Daily News -by JOE GOULD , CLARE TRAPASSO AND RICH SCHAPIRO
A Wal-Mart worker died early Friday after an “out-of-control” mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through the Long Island store’s front doors and trampled him, police said.
The Black Friday stampede plunged the Valley Stream outlet into chaos, knocking several employees to the ground and sending others scurrying atop vending machines to avoid the horde.
When the madness ended, 34-year-old Jdimytai Damour was dead and four shoppers, including a woman eight months pregnant, were injured.
“He was bum-rushed by 200 people,” said Wal-Mart worker Jimmy Overby, 43.
“They took the doors off the hinges. He was trampled and killed in front of me.
“They took me down, too … I didn’t know if I was going to live through it. I literally had to fight people off my back,” Overby said.
Damour, a temporary maintenance worker from Jamaica, Queens, was gasping for air as shoppers continued to surge into the store after its 5 a.m. opening, witnesses said.
Even officers who arrived to perform CPR on the trampled worker were stepped on by wild-eyed shoppers streaming inside, a cop at the scene said.
“They pushed him down and walked all over him,” Damour’s sobbing sister, Danielle, 41, said. “How could these people do that?
“He was such a young man with a good heart, full of life. He didn’t deserve that.”
Damour’s sister said doctors told the family he died of a heart attack.
His cousin, Ernst Damour, called the circumstances “completely unacceptable.”
“His body was a stepping bag with so much disregard for human life,” Ernst Damour, 37, said. “There has to be some accountability.”
Roughly 2,000 people gathered outside the Wal-Mart’s doors in the predawn darkness.
Chanting “push the doors in,” the crowd pressed against the glass as the clock ticked down to the 5 a.m. opening.
Sensing catastrophe, nervous employees formed a human chain inside the entrance to slow down the mass of shoppers.
It didn’t work.
The mob barreled in and overwhelmed workers.
“They were jumping over the barricades and breaking down the door,” said Pat Alexander, 53, of Crown Heights, Brooklyn. “Everyone was screaming. You just had to keep walking on your toes to keep from falling over.”
After the throng toppled Damour, his fellow employees had to fight through the crowd to help him, police said.
Witness Kimberly Cribbs said shoppers acted like “savages.”
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since Friday morning!'” Cribbs said. “They kept shopping.”
When paramedics arrived, Damour’s condition was grave.
“They were pumping his chest, trying to bring him back, and there was nothing,” said Dennis Smokes, 36, a Wal-Mart worker.
Damour was taken to Franklin Hospital and pronounced dead at 6:03 a.m.
Hank Mullany, president of Wal-Mart’s northeast division, said the company took extraordinary safety precautions.
“We expected a large crowd this morning and added additional internal security, additional third-party security, additional store associates and we worked closely with the Nassau County police,” he said in a statement.
“We also erected barricades. Despite all of our precautions, this unfortunate event occurred.”
The 28-year-old pregnant woman and three other shoppers were taken to area hospitals with minor injuries, police said.
In a news conference after the incident, Nassau County police spokesman Lt. Michael Fleming described the crowd as “out of control” and the scene as “utter chaos.” He said Wal-Mart did not have enough security onhand.
Fleming said criminal charges were possible but that it would be difficult to identify individual shoppers in surveillance videos.
Items on sale at the Wal-Mart store included a $798 Samsung 50-inch Plasma HDTV, a Bissel Compact Upright Vacuum for $28 and Men’s Wrangler Tough Jeans for $8.
The Long Island store reopened at 1 p.m. and was packed within minutes.
“I look at these people’s faces and I keep thinking one of them could have stepped on him,” said one employee. “How could you take a man’s life to save $20 on a TV?”
Notice? The above quoted response by management. Wal Mart never accepts responsibility for anything…happening right on their own property…weather the size of wages paid, slave labor goods sold, their employees mistreated in other ways, as this incident…
Valley Stream, eh? I grew up nearby about 45 years ago, and a few years ago someone at this same WalMart was trampled to death….there goes the neighborhood I guess…
I’m curious. Why are all of these Black Friday stories always happening at Wal-Mart every year? How come you never hear anyone being trampled on at Victoria’s Secret or JCPenney. I guess all the animals go to Wal-Mart.
Naw NC, the poor guy was probobly getting close to his probationary time or maybe wallyworld just had a big life insurance policy out on the guy. Wouldn`t suprise me one bit.
Hey diggerdan, I just had an excellent visual. I imagined these people busting down the doors of Walmart on Black Friday only to find they have jumped off the edge of the Grand Canyon. Just a thought.
Ha Ha, Yea Millard. Kind of like that show 300 – I think it was – when they were jumping into that void, or what ever they called that hole in the earth 🙂
well you got it nailed..cheap priced stupid so called humans and is a repeat story from several years ago..but then again the brainless repeat history.black Friday..when the animals come out too shop.
That’s a rather bizarre user name. First time I’ve seen it.
Rings true, though.
Have you seen “the people of wal-mart” videos on youtube? They are hilarios and explain much.
They should have closed the doors and gassed them all!
Eliminate the poor genes.
Hahahaha!!! I know I shouldn’t laugh, but it’s too funny.
I’d venture a wild guess that the majority of those ‘people’ AREN’T going to make it, once the SHTF.
Oh come on, #1. Think positive. lol
You don’t see that as a positive, NC?
🙂
Finally we have a black Friday martyr, and hopefully he’s the first of many idiots to be killed.
Do any of them deserve to live if they’re willing to kill for anything in Wal-Mart?
Someone should market Black Friday weaponry so we get a nice body count next year.
The trampled fool now qualifies to get his picture on the Walmart “employee of the month” wall.