Murdered for a Bargain

Jdimytai Damour was attempting, along with co-workers, to hold together the sliding glass doors that were beginning to bulge and break under the press of eager shoppers as Wal-Mart's opening time neared. This action cost him his life.
The overstrained doors shattered, and a throng of eager shoppers streamed in, knocking Damour and his co-workers to the ground and viciously trampling them. Other workers who tried to help were beaten back by the streaming crowd.
When I read the reports of the New York Times and Associated Press regarding these events, I was horrified. How could people be so callous? Is a half-price vacuum cleaner really worth a person's life? What's more, shoppers stepped over Damour's body to continue getting into the store. More shoppers casually walked by, through the broken doors, as rescue crews tried to revive the slain man. Further, when it became evident that he was dead and management tried to close the store, the crowd resisted!
“When they were saying they had to leave, that an employee got killed, people were yelling, ‘I’ve been on line since yesterday morning,’ ” a witness told The Associated Press. “They kept shopping.”
The police had to help employees clear the store.
Ridiculous is too mild a word to describe the situation. It is positively criminal. The people who broke down that door and through that man are murderers. The ones who stepped over him are guilty of negligent homicide. Did they forget their conscience at home when they went to wait in line for what they knew would be days? How does the desire to buy gifts override the instinctive concern one has for those who are injured? Perhaps these people have no such instinct.
Wal-Mart addressed the issue mildly through a spokesman, affirming the "priority" of the "safety" of their "associates": “The safety and security of our customers and associates is our top priority. Our thoughts and prayers are with them and their families at this tragic time.”
The New York Times thought to seek the opinion of the United Food and Commercial Workers, whose attempts to unionize Wal-Mart employees have been continually rebuffed by the discount chain.
“Where were the safety barriers?” said Bruce Both, the union president. “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.”
One has to see Mr. Both's point, even though he obviously has an agenda. Wal-Mart and store management could have done numerous things to prevent this occurrence. I doubt that Damour and his co-workers went to barricade the door of their own free will; it must have seemed dangerous at the time. Store managers must have ordered them to. This was shortsighted and irresponsible, yes, but who could have foreseen the inhuman mobbish mentality of those who broke down the door?
What truly chills me to the quick about this tragedy is that I have a dear, wonderful friend who has had the misfortune to be assigned by her temp agency to Wal-Mart for the holidays. She is nowhere near Nassau County and didn't work on Black Friday, thanks to the graces of fortune.
Negligence and a tepid concern for safety are what we have come to expect from Wal-Mart, so their role in this is unsurprising. It fits their modus operandi of low-grade insidious evil. However, it is disturbing when one realizes that each of the members of the crowd that broke down the doors of a discount store and trampled a man to death in search of bargains is a human being; a thinking, reasoning individual. They made decisions that resulted in this end. This Wal-Mart is situated in one of the richest counties and villages in the United States, and it also attracts shoppers from neighboring Queens, New York. These were not people forcing their way in out of true necessity. What was different in their experience that made it okay to break down the doors of a store in search of Black Friday bargains? Has advertising worked that heavily on the American consciousness?