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The Spokesman-Review Newspaper
Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Call it black-and-blue Friday

A San Leandro, Calif., police officer, right, holds a bloody shirt at the scene of a shooting at Wal-Mart. (Associated Press)

 Scuffles broke out around the U.S. as bargain-hunters crowded malls and big-box stores on Black Friday. In two incidents, shoppers got a little extra competitive:

  • A woman trying to improve her chance to buy cheap electronics at a Wal-Mart in a wealthy suburb in Southern California spewed pepper spray on a crowd of fellow shoppers, police said. Twenty people suffered minor injuries.

  • A shopper was subdued with a stun gun at an Alabama Wal-Mart store after he hit another shopper, authorities said.

 At least three incidents outside stores involved robbers preying on shoppers. And police said another altercation was gang-related:

  • A Black Friday shopper in San Leandro, Calif., was shot when he resisted a group of armed robbers trying to steal his family’s purchases in the crowded parking lot of a Wal-Mart store, authorities said. He was hospitalized in critical but stable condition. One man was arrested and at least three more are sought.

  • Two Black Friday shoppers were robbed at gunpoint in the parking lot of a Hilton Head Island shopping center, authorities said.

  • Police say a woman was shopping before dawn when she was knocked down in a Milford, Conn., parking lot by a man who tried to steal her purse.

  • A man was stabbed outside a Sacramento, Calif., mall in an apparently gang-related incident about 3 a.m. Friday as shoppers flooded nearby stores. Police said there was a dispute over comments about women who were with two of the combatants. The third was taken to a hospital.

Associated Press