Wal-Mart cited in Black Friday death

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Wal-Mart was cited by the federal Occupational Safety and Health Administration today for poor crowd management in the death of a worker in a Black Friday stampede last year.

The agency, part of the U.S. Department of Labor, said in a statement that Wal-Mart Stores Inc. didn’t give employees enough training or tools to deal with a mob of shoppers at its Valley Stream, N.Y., store.

Seasonal worker Jdimytai Damour, 34, of Jamaica died as a result, knocked to the ground and asphyxiated after being trampled by 2,000 bargain-hunters when the store opened at 5 a.m., the agency said. His family has sued the retailer and several county agencies.

The Nov. 28 surge also injured several other people.

An inspection conducted by the agency’s Long Island Area Office in Westbury, N.Y. found that employees were exposed to being crushed by the crowd and that Wal-Mart didn’t implement “reasonable and effective crowd management principles,” according to the statement.

‘This was an unusual situation but not an unforeseen one,’ said Anthony Ciuffo, OSHA’s acting director for Long Island.

The citation carries a proposed $7,000 fine, the maximum penalty. Wal-Mart must either pay the fine, meet with the agency’s area director in an informal conference or contest the citation within 15 days.

Nassau County Dist. Atty. Kathleen Rice agreed earlier this month not to prosecute Wal-Mart in the incident. In exchange, the giant will implement an improved statewide crowd-management plan for Black Friday events at all of its 92 New York stores, set up a $400,000 victims’ compensation and remuneration fund, donate $1.5 million to the community and provide 50 jobs annually to Nassau teens.

In a statement, Wal-Mart spokeswoman Daphne Moore told the Associated Press that the retailer has ‘never had a tragedy like this occur in our stores and we never want it to happen again. ... There is no OSHA or retail industry guidance that would have alerted us to this type of unforeseeable hazard.’

-- Tiffany Hsu