(Reuters & Other Media) Seven dead and dozens injured in Black Friday riots in New York and across the United State, Reuters and many other media reported.
The first known fatality occurred at a Wal-Mart in Secaucus, New Jersey, a woman repeatedly stabbed a man with a kitchen knife taken from the housewares section to prevent him from buying the last Xbox 360.
Another sad incident transpired at a Tucker, Georgia Toys R Us. One woman bludgeoned another to death with a baseball bat over an American Girl doll. She was heard yelling at her victim, "hasta la vista, baby."
Cars were overturned and set on fire in Chicago, while a security guard was beaten to death by an angry mob in Sheboygan, Wisconsin. The first of these incidents involved a DVD player priced at $17.95, and the second was touched off by the Xbox 360.
In Columbus, Ohio a shortage of Star Wars toys had shoppers at wit's end when someone yelled, "they've got some over here!" A stampede ensued. Four were left trampled.
In Glendale, California, two men fighting over an electronic toy called a Roboraptor knocked over several shelves full of merchandise causing thousands of dollars in destruction.
A shopper pepper-sprayed other bargain hunters and robbers shot at customers to steal their Black Friday purchases, marring the start of the U.S. holiday shopping season, Reuters quotes local authorities.
Up to 20 people were injured after a woman used pepper spray at a Walmart in Los Angeles to get an edge on her competitors. In a second incident, off-duty officers in North Carolina used pepper spray to subdue rowdy shoppers waiting for electronics.
A man was in critical but stable condition after being shot by robbers in a parking lot outside a Walmart In San Leandro, California, Sergeant Mike Sobek said.
The man was in a group of men headed for their car after shopping when robbers confronted them and a fight ensued, Sobek said. The man's shopping companions held down one of the robbers until police arrived and took him into custody.
"It doesn't look like they got away with anything. They weren't expecting these guys to fight back," Sobek said.
In Los Angeles, authorities were reviewing security tapes to track down a woman in her 30s who pepper-sprayed a crowd at a Walmart as customers swarmed for Xboxes on sale late Thursday, Los Angeles police Sergeant J. Valle said.
In another incident, a woman was shot in the foot by a robber who accosted her in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, early on Friday demanding her purse as she and companions put their purchases into a car trunk near a Walmart, police said.
The shopper was hospitalized. Her condition was not known.
A Walmart at Cave Creek, Arizona, was evacuated and shopping halted temporarily Thursday night after an apparent explosive device was found in an employee break room, Maricopa County Sheriff's Department spokesman Christopher Hegstrom said.
"We sent a robot in," Hegstrom said, adding that the device was removed and the store was reopened after bomb squad dogs were sent through the facility.
In Manhattan, a group of shoppers upset that Hollister's flagship store was not opening at midnight like other locations apparently broke into the store and stole a large quantity of clothing, police said. No arrests have been made in the burglary.
Black Friday is the busiest day of the year for U.S. stores. The first reference found to the term "Black Friday" was in a World News Tonight segment by Dan Cordtz from November 26, 1982: "Some merchants label the day after Thanksgiving Black Friday because business today can mean the difference betweeen red ink and black on the ledgers."
Walmart is the U.S. discount store unit of Wal-Mart Stores Inc . A company spokesman, Greg Rossiter, said violence at a handful of stores marred an otherwise safe start to the holiday shopping season at thousands of Walmart stores in the U.S.