November 26 (RIA Novosti) - Nothing says “Happy Holidays” quite like a little crowd violence, apparently.
It seems no “Black Friday” shopping weekend is worth a flip these days without some pushing and shoving, insult-hurling and general chaos thrown in to help mark the official start of the US holiday shopping season. And 2012 delivered in multitude, complete with guns, gangs and pepper spray.
Here are our picks for the top half-dozen most outlandish displays of holiday shopping madness over the long Thanksgiving holiday weekend in the United States:
6. Forget the Kid
Police in Massachusetts had to break into a car in a K-Mart retail store parking lot around 1:30 a.m. Friday to reach a 2-year-old boy after his mother’s boyfriend who was watching him at the time went inside to buy a flat-screen television. Police say when they caught up with the man at the couple’s home he told them the boy was gone when he got back to the car… so he found another way home.
5. Smartphone Savagery
Here’s the scene at an outlet in Georgia for Wal-Mart, the biggest US retail chain, where a pile of smartphones was put on sale:
4. Drunk Shopping
Police in Washington state say two shoppers trying to get into a Wal-Mart for Black Friday sales were hit in the parking lot by a car driven by another shopper, a 71-year-old man suspected of being drunk. A woman was pinned beneath the driver’s vehicle before being freed and airlifted to a trauma center for treatment. The man with her was also badly injured.
3. Sale Protest
Disgruntled Wal-Mart union workers staged Black Friday protests designed to embarrass the company during the shopping weekend. Organizers say there were around 1,000 protests held at various stores across the nation. A Wal-Mart spokesman says that figure is “grossly exaggerated.”
2. Mall Brawl
At least two people were arrested in the early hours of Friday at a shopping mall in Michigan following a reported gang fight that prompted someone to use pepper spray in the enclosed space, affecting nearby shoppers. “The whole mall is choking!” posted one tweeter who was present in the mayhem.
And the Number One Most Appalling Black Friday Outburst:
1. Firing Line
In Texas, a Wild-West-style chain of events saw one man chased from a Sears retail store by a fellow shopper who pulled out a gun after being punched in the face – by the first man – when he complained at the man’s attempt to jump to the head of the checkout line ahead of him. Other shoppers dove for cover and the would-be line cutter took cover briefly behind some kitchen appliances before running out of the store, a local newspaper reported. No one was arrested.
