Shoppers scuffle on Black Friday

Associated Press

A shopper in Los Angeles pepper-sprayed her competition for an Xbox, and scuffles broke out elsewhere around the U.S. as bargain-hunters crowded malls and big-box stores in an earlier-than-usual start to the madness known as Black Friday.

For the first time, chains such as Target, Best Buy and Kohl’s opened their doors at midnight on the most anticipated shopping day of the year. Toys “R” Us opened for the second-straight year on Thanksgiving itself. And some shoppers arrived with sharp elbows.

On Thanksgiving night, a Walmart in Los Angeles brought out a crate of discounted Xboxes, and as a crowd waited for the video- game players to be unwrapped, a woman fired pepper spray at the other shoppers “in order to get an advantage,” police said.

Ten people suffered cuts and bruises in the chaos, and 10 others had minor injuries from the spray, authorities said. The woman got away in the confusion, and it was not immediately clear whether she got an Xbox.

On Friday morning, police said, two women were injured and a man was charged after a fight broke out at an upstate New York Walmart. And a man was arrested in a scuffle at a jewelry counter at a Walmart in Kissimmee, Fla.

Wal-Mart, the nation’s biggest retailer, has taken steps in recent years to control its Black Friday crowds after the 2008 death of one of its workers in a stampede of shoppers. This year, it staggered its door-buster deals instead of offering them all at once.

Wal-Mart spokesman Greg Rossiter said Black Friday was safe at most of its nearly 4,000 U.S. stores, but there were “a few unfortunate incidents.”

The incidents were attributed to two converging Black Friday trends: Crowds are getting bigger as stores open earlier and stay open later. At the same time, cash-strapped shoppers are competing for deals on a small number of gifts that everybody wants — tablet computers, TVs and game consoles such as Xbox, Nintendo 3S and Wii.

That’s a shift from years past, when there was a wider range of must-have items.

“The more the people, the more the occurrences,” said Marshal Cohen, chief industry analyst with market research firm The NPD Group.

For three days starting on Black Friday, 152 million people are expected to shop, up about 10 percent from last year, according to the National Retail Federation.