Fights at Walmart have broken out during the Black Friday shopping bonanza, triggering social media users to coin the #Walmartfights trend.
Several videos uploaded on YouTube show angry mobs fighting over items, including flat-screen televisions. One such video, called “Walmart Kicked Me Out For THIS video,” taken in North Carolina has since been viewed more than 1 million times.
The YouTube uploader said he recorded the video in Elkin, N.C. He was later identified as filmmaker Brian Spain
“I saw the crazy full parking lot at Walmart, so I decided to go in and interview people about why they were there, how they felt about it taking away from the holiday and also how they felt about Walmart wages,” Spain told Forbes.
He added: “That’s when I saw the fight happen. I immediately had an employee -- I assume the manager since he was the one that kicked me out -- tell me that I had to turn my camera off and leave the store or I would be arrested for trespassing.”
There was another video posted on Thursday night of a fight at Walmart, but it’s unclear where it was shot.
Overnight, the term #WalmartFights trended, according to several monitoring websites, including TrendsMapUSA.
Some Twitter users posted photos of people being taken out on stretchers and in ambulances at Walmart, purportedly due to fights or incidents during Black Friday.
Bloomberg News reported that Walmart has ramped up security on Friday after the fights broke out over TVs.
“Any time you get more than 22 million people together you’re going to have some behavior you’re not proud of,” Bill Simon, the chief executive officer of Walmart’s U.S. division, told the news agency.
He added that “the number of incidents” was down from 2012. It’s also “hard to tell what happened in any individual incident,” he said.
