Welcome to Brawl-Mart.
Mayhem erupted at big-box stores across the USA as frenzied shoppers vying for holiday deals turned on each other and resorted to violence to get their goods.
Reports of retail assaults, shootings and arrests piled up so fast that by Thursday night, Black Friday already had a trending Twitter hashtag: #WalmartFights.
Adding to the insanity, a Wal-Mart in White Plains was hit with a phony bomb threat on Friday afternoon. Two anonymous bomb-scare calls to the store on Main Street at about 12:30 p.m. prompted a full evacuation, and police used bomb-sniffing dogs to sweep the property, said White Plains Police Chief James Bradley. Shoppers and employees were allowed back inside at 2:10 p.m., said Bradley.
And it wasn’t just Wal-Mart going nuts. A cop at a Kohl’s store outside of Chicago shot a would-be shoplifter who fled in his car — and dragged another officer who was halfway into the vehicle across the parking lot, said police in Romeoville, Illinois. The Thursday night incident led to three arrests and a trip to the hospital for the shot driver and the dragged officer – both of whom, incredibly, sustained only minor injuries.
A Target customer in Las Vegas was shot in the leg near his home on Thursday night — but not seriously wounded — after trying to wrestle his newly purchased big-screen TV back from a thief who had just grabbed it, police there said.
A Thursday night fight over a Wal-Mart parking space in Claypool Hill, Va., ended when one man knifed another in the arm so viciously that he hit bone, said the Tazewell County Sheriff’s Office. Both men are facing charges in the incident, authorities said.
Shoppers also filmed some of the melees and stampedes, and posted the clips online, where commenters had a field day. One Tweet compared Black Friday to Spain’s Running of the Bulls — “but replaced with badly dressed people.”
A man who filmed customers fighting inside a packed Wal-Mart near Charlotte, N.C., on Thursday night said security guards kicked him out — but let the brawlers stay and keep on shopping. The man, identified as Brian Spain, posted the video to YouTube after he was shown the door.
The clip shows one customer, in particular, bulling his way into a crowd of people using a flat-screen TV as a shield.
Warning: Bad Language
Shopping also ended early for Richard Ramos, 23, of Passaic, N.J., who was pepper sprayed and arrested by police on Thursday night at a Wal-Mart in Garfield, authorities there said. Garfield police said Ramos was arguing vehemently with another Wal-Mart shopper over a television, and then lunged at a cop who’d been called over by the manager. Ramos is facing multiple charges including aggravated assault of a police officer, authorities told The Star-Ledger.
A cop in Rialto, Ca., broke his wrist trying to stop a fight between shoppers who had swarmed a local Wal-Mart, authorities there said. Police blamed the chaos on the store’s decision to open the doors an hour early on Thursday night to more than 3,000 people crowded outside.
Police from three local departments were called in to help restore order, the San Bernardino Sun reported. The injured officer was hospitalized and several people were arrested.
A Wal-Mart spokesperson called the row in Rialto “an unfortunate and isolated incident.”