clipped from: www.nytimes.com   

The throng of Wal-Mart shoppers had been building all night, filling sidewalks and stretching across a vast parking lot at the Green Acres Mall in Valley Stream, N.Y. At 3:30 a.m., the Nassau County police had to be called in for crowd control, and an officer with a bullhorn pleaded for order.

By 4:55, with no police officers in sight, the crowd of more than 2,000 had become a rabble, and could be held back no longer.
Suddenly, witnesses and the police said, the doors shattered, and the shrieking mob surged through in a blind rush for holiday bargains.
One worker, Jdimytai Damour, 34, was thrown back onto the black linoleum tiles and trampled in the stampede that streamed over and around him.
Others who had stood alongside Mr. Damour trying to hold the doors were also hurled back and run over, witnesses said.

Four other people, including a 28-year-old woman who was described as eight months pregnant, were treated at the hospital for minor injuries.