Pepper-spraying shopper gets to Wal-Mart gadgets first
Black Friday at a Wal-Mart in Los Angeles turns sour when a shopper, desperate to get to gadgets before her fellow consumers, pepper-sprays them in order to achieve electronic bargain nirvana.
Some say that the competitive spirit in America had died.
Those people are surely turning a blind eye to the places where Americans are showing that winning still is truly everything.
Last night, for example, at the Wal-Mart in the Porter Ranch section of Los Angeles, there were reportedly many shoppers ready to vie for the finest electronic bargains.
The way the Los Angeles Times disseminates it, one lady shopper showed that she would not be defeated under any circumstances. She allegedly got out her pepper spray and showed the rest of those wusses who was Queen of the Electronic Aisles.
As the 10 p.m. whistle blew for action, there were people fighting over the video games and Xbox consoles.
Witnesses told the LA Times that they suddenly experienced a peculiar coughing sensation. One shopper, 27-year-old Cesar Seminario, said: "After we paid, we saw five that were in really bad shape. They had been sprayed in the face, it looked like, and they had swelling of the face, really extreme swelling of face, redness, coughing."
The pepper-spraying lady allegedly got away. The New York Daily News quoted Lt. Abel Parga as saying: "Somehow she was trying to use [the pepper spray] to gain an upper hand."
Some will believe that she was inspired to her competitive act by Lt. John Pike, the University of California, Davis, policeman who attempted to disperse a group of passive protesters by dispersing pepper spray all over them.
No one yet knows, as the pepper-spraying shopper is allegedly still at large.
More refined thinkers, though, will simply be wondering what she bought and how much she paid for it.
This is Black Friday, America. It's no place for lily-livered or the sensitive-eyed.