What price are you willing to pay for a deal?

No way you missed this story if you’ve turned on the radio or the TV today, because it’s the headline for almost every newscast.  It’s so astounding!  The Kitchen Cabinet offers an inside perspective because this particular Wal-Mart is HER Wal-Mart!  The Porter Ranch Wal-Mart is cookie-cutter identical to all the others around the country and it is located in an upscale, suburban part of Los Angeles not far from where Steven Spielberg shot his famous movie “E.T.”

The incident occurred around 10:00pm on Thanksgiving eve, and a total of 20 customers, including CHILDREN, were hurt by an aggressive woman armed with pepper spray and unafraid to use it!

Police are still looking for the perpetrator.  She could have been somebody’s Mom, but chances are in this mostly-Asian, and generally civilized  L.A. neighborhood that someone with a flea market business was pushing through the crowds to get deals to re-sell out on the street.  Likely, popular and difficult to get toys and electronics.   The police don’t have much to work on:

This was customer-versus-customer ‘shopping rage,'” said Los Angeles Police Lt. Abel Parga.

The woman used the spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart “to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store,” said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson.

“She was competitive shopping,” he said.

Police are searching for the woman but said they’ve had trouble getting a clear description of her.

Black Friday sales began at the Wal-Mart at 10 p.m. and featured sales on toys, including $5 Bratz dolls, $10 Wii video games and $29 tricycles.

Looks like....Fun. Doesn't it?????

Witness Matthew Lopez described a chaotic scene in the San Fernando Valley store among shoppers looking for video games soon after the sale began.

“I heard screaming and I heard yelling,” said Lopez, 18. “Moments later, my throat stung. I was coughing really bad and watering up.”

Lopez said customers were already in the store when a whistle signaled the start of the Black Friday sale at 10 p.m., sending shoppers hurtling in search of deeply discounted items.

Lopez said that by the time he arrived at the video games, the display had been torn down. Employees attempted to hold back the scrum of shoppers and pick up merchandise even as customers trampled the video games and DVDs strewn on the floor.

“It was absolutely crazy,” he said.

Let’s remember who we are!  Perhaps retailers should limit how many shoppers they permit inside their stores for these sales as well.  One wrong move….and someone could be badly hurt.  In another part of Los Angeles, it wasn’t pepper spray, it was a gun, and someone was wounded.

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Filed under: Economy, Featured, Inside The KC by Sonja Eddings Brown, Nov 25, 2011