Black Friday Shoppers Hit With Pepper Spray at Walmart

I thought I was the Christmas Grinch.At a Wal-mart (NYSE: WMT) in southern California, a mob of shoppers massed to purchase Xboxes and low-price Xbox games as part of the chain's Black Friday sale. Right on cue, at 10 pm Thursday night, workers blew a whistle, signifying the beginning of the shopping sale bonanza.By 10:10, 20 people had been hit with pepper spray by one woman — who has not yet been identified — who wanted to eliminate as much of the competition for the limited-quantity sale items as possible."This was customer-versus-customer 'shopping rage,'" said Los Angeles Police Lt. Abel Parga.According to the Los Angeles Times, the woman police are looking for used the pepper spray in more than one area of the Wal-Mart "to gain preferred access to a variety of locations in the store," said Los Angeles Fire Capt. James Carson."She was competitive shopping," he said.Well, that's one way to put it. Another way to put it would be "assault and battery". Police say the woman faces, at a minimum, one charge of assault and battery for each of the 20 people she pepper sprayed...if they can catch her. She was able to leave the store undetected, having gone through the checkout lanes with her items before anyone could piece together who she was. As of now, police do not have a good description of the shopping sprayer, but they expect that to change once Wal-mart hands over their video surveillance tapes.One LAPD sergeant said the Wal-Mart video should be clear enough to help identify the suspect. "Eventually this will catch up with her," he said. "It generally takes a day or two to coordinate with Wal-Mart Security" to get video footage shot around a store, he said.Like my stories? You can subscribe for my free newsletter here.Read more of my stories at Benzinga. You can also reach me by email john@benzinga.com or on twitter @johndthorpe.