'Man dies after collapsing in shopping center during Black Friday'

Man dies after collapsing in shopping center during Black Friday
Goes unnoticed by other shoppers



BY Kathryn Kattalia
NEW YORK DAILY NEWS

Sunday, November 27 2011, 12:04 AM

A Black Friday shopper who collapsed at a West Virginia shopping center — and later died — went virtually unnoticed by others racing to snatch up early-bird sales.

Walter Vance, 61, of Logan County, W. Va., was shopping for Christmas decorations around 12:15 a.m. at a Target in South Charleston, W. Va., when he got sick and fell to floor, local news station WSAZ reported.

Witnesses said shoppers continued walking around the store, some even stepping over the man's body.

An emergency room nurse who was among those shopping eventually found Vance and began administering CPR. She was assisted by an off-duty paramedic who was also at the store.

An ambulance was called and Vance was taken to a nearby hospital, where he died, the news station reported.

Friends said, Vance, who was the owner of a Aracome Drug Company store in Chapmanville, had heart problems for years and underwent open heart surgery in 2000.

But the way he died outraged friends.

"Where is the good Samaritan side of people?" Vance's co-worker Sue Compton told WSAZ. "How could you not notice someone was in trouble? I just don't understand if people didn't help what their reason was, other than greed because of a sale."

It wasn't the only tragedy to strike on Black Friday.

The shopping day took a chaotic turn for the worse at a Walmart in Porter Ranch, Calif., where a woman pepper sprayed a crowd of shoppers waiting to get their hands on a display of discounted X-box 360 game sets.

The woman eventually surrendered to police.

There were also reports of gun shots fired at a mall in Fayetteville, N.C., and a shooting outside a store in San Leandro, Calif., that left one shopper critically injured, the Associated Press reported.