People injured in cheap iBook sale
Posted by Dennis Sellers 
Aug 16, 2005 at 3:51pm
A rush to purchase US$50 used iBooks turned into a violent stampede Tuesday, with people getting thrown to the pavement, beaten with a folding chair and nearly driven over, according to a Fox News report. The story adds that one woman went so far to wet herself rather than surrender her place in line.
An estimated 5,500 people turned out at the Richmond (Virginia) International Raceway in hopes of getting their hands on one of the four-year-old iBooks, Fox News reports. The Henrico County (search) school system was selling 1,000 of the computers to county residents.
In April the school system decided to ditch Apple and go with Dell computers. The Henrico County School Board voted on June 16 to distribute Dells to every high school student and teacher next year. Middle school students and teachers and elementary school teachers will continue using iBooks, while high school students and teachers will switch to Dell.
Susan L. Says:
Well, I was one of the early birds having gotten into line about 4:15’ish. I was about 150th in line. There were 2 police officers there. A camaraderie formed with the “group” as the minutes ticked by, we joked, sang, played music and attempted to start the “wave” on a few occasions. Things went great until people started arriving around dawn. People attempted to cut into line or not get in line at all. When you get to know your neighbor and have been waiting, this started ticking people off. Many in our group were telling them to “get to the back of the line!” One young man said to me “this is a black thing!” I said “what color is she?” My friend Shirley is black and was standing in front of me. He backed off. Why is there always a race card issue? I’m ashamed of myself for that mentality but we were hot, tired and ticked! As the minutes went by more and more people came and didn’t want to get to the back of the line. The police attempted to control them and tell them they had to get in line but they ignored them – there were only 5 police officers when the gates opened. When the gates opened at 7:00, all of the people that were not in line started to rush the gates. If you were there, you saw it and could see that once the people that weren’t in line started rushing the gates, the people that were in line started running too as they had been in line for hours. I saw the scene and said “this isn’t worth it!” I left. I got a call a few minutes later on my cell phone from my friend Shirley asking me where I was. She said she had been shoved to the ground, lost her shoes, had no skin on her knees, was at the bottom of a pile at one point, but got back up and kept going. (I found out later in the day that she did in fact get an iBook.) At some point after the crowd reached the building, she told me that tickets were handed out. I am absolutely amazed that they didn’t have the foresight to hand these tickets out to those of us in line as the line formed. Had they done that, a lot of what happened could have been avoided. They could have been told that the tickets were gone and to go home. This morning watching the news I saw that some were already on eBay and fetching $285+. Amazing. I have to say that I question the intelligence of not only the Henrico Board, but the Henrico Police Department. To say that “they didn’t expect that many people,” to me is dumbfounding. Just think – had the general public been able to participate this would have been even worse. I’m just amazed. What morons did we vote in that are supposed to be educating and setting the example to our children? Amazingly stupid apparently!
Posted on August 17, 2005
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Dennis Sellers
Dennis has been a newspaper editor/reporter (seven years) and teacher (seven years). He has over 4,000 magazine, newspaper and online articles to his credit. He has also covered the Mac and tech industries for over a decade for such online publications as MacCentral, MacMinute and now MacsimumNews.
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smokeonit Says:
i don’t think 5.5k would have showed up for dell’s that are 4 years old, LOL
Posted on August 16, 2005