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Retailers count on their holiday sales to make the bulk of their profits every year. To lure more and more people in, many have long used Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving to kick off the shopping frenzy, marking big ticket items down, offering crazy bargains and other sales that change hourly or only last for an hour or so. Some of the items are the hottest trending product of the moment while others are traditionally big sellers during the holiday season.
Injuries have long been part of the chaos: in 2008 employees were injured during a stampede when they tried to unlock the doors at five am. But, in order to get more people through their doors, especially during the times of economic downturns, some retailers have started the war of hours- moving their start time back to midnight on Thanksgiving night. While there has been issues with Black Friday violence and bad behavior at other retailers, it has been Wal Mart that is getting the black eye from this year's Black Friday in the media with reports of violence occurring at Wal Mart stores across the country- Wal Mart locations in seven different states made it into the news with arrests, injuries and more.
Two Wal Mart locations in California have caught national attention. In the first, an unidentified woman in her thirties pepper sprayed nearly a dozen people to get to discounted video game players. That woman paid for her item and left the store before police arrived. Los Angeles firefighters were called and treated at least ten people on the scene, most of them for burning, watering eyes. Meanwhile, in San Leandro, California, a robbery gone wrong in a Wal Mart parking lot has left one person in the hospital, being treated for a gun shot wound. A suspect was arrested in that incident.
Armed robberies were also reported in other locations, including Fayetteville, North Carolina and Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. A misunderstanding in North Carolina caused an off duty cop to pepper spray a Wal Mart customer because of what he thought was a disturbance. Witnesses to that event report that a customer was actually pushed, causing a large display to collapse.
Videos of some of the events have been released and are being reviewed. The suspect in the pepper spraying incident is still at large, but may be identified once those videos are more closely examined. In Alabama, another video is being looked at after police had to taser a 22 year old man twice. That man was arrested and will be charged with several crimes including public intoxication.
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