This is one way you can try and make sure you get the Black Friday doorbusters:
Black Friday took an ugly turn at a Los Angeles Wal-Mart when a female shopper -desperate to get her hands on discounted electronics-pepper sprayed a crowd to keep them away from the merchandise she wanted.
At least 20 shoppers suffered minor injuries and police are still looking for the woman.
The melee began shortly after 10:20 p.m. Thursday as shoppers prowling for Black Friday deals were let inside the store.
The suspect began shooting the pepper spray when the coverings of items she wanted were removed, according to police.
"Somehow she was trying to use [the pepper spray] to gain an upper hand," police Lt. Abel Parga said.
Witnesses described the frenzied scene to the Los Angeles Times, detailing how shoppers-gone-wild tore down video game displays, trampled merchandise and shoved each other for the deeply-discounted goods.
"People started screaming, pulling and pushing each other, and then the whole area filled up with pepper spray," Alejandra Seminario, 24, told the newspaper.
After the competitive shopper unleashed the chemicals, Seminario said she began to cough and her face began to itch.
"I guess what triggered it was people started pulling the plastic off the pallets and then shoving and bombarding the display of games. It started with people pushing and screaming because they were getting shoved onto the boxes," she added.
Chaos also erupted at a Fayetteville, N.C. mall after gunfire erupted. Police are looking for two suspects. Luckily no one was injured.
Wal-Mart came under the microscope on Black Friday in 2008, when a store employee died after a mob of frenzied shoppers smashed through a Long Island store front and trampled the worker to death.
Despite the mahem in Los Angeles, the store remained opened and those not affected by the pepper spray continued to hunt for bargains.
"I don't care," Nakeasha Contreras, a 20 year old who arrived after the incident, told the Times. "I'm still getting my TV."
It's interesting that the NY Post and other corporate media outlets have described the Occupy Wall Street protesters as "animals" and the tents that housed a library, a medical center and a media center at Zuccotti Park as a "zoo," but somehow don't blink when the greed and bleed that is "Black Friday" sets off these kinds of incidents.
If anything can be described as a "zoo," it's the malls and shopping areas of America on this most evil of days - Black Shop Til You Drop Friday.
And if anybody can be described as animals, it's these people who use pepper spray, gunfire and violence to get the Doorbuster Barbie doll or whatever other piece of consumer crap they're lusting after.
And don't forget that shoppers camp out in front of the stores with tents--sometimes days ahead of time--to get those bargains first. If anything illustrates that the birthday of the "Prince of Peace" has been perverted by consumerism, I guess the behavior you covered above does it.
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