Footage shows dozens of young people barging their way into a street wear store in Perth, Australia, with many knocked over in the doorway after they were invited to ransack the store on Boxing Day
Australia: Stampede as streetwear store ‘robbed’ in Boxing Day sales
A massive stampede of teens pushed and shoved their way into a shop after they were invited to ransack the store.
Dozens of young men could be seen running towards the shop StreetX in Perth on Boxing Day, and in the mayhem people were pictured with cuts and bruises.
Store owner and founder of the StreetX label, Daniel Bradshaw, had encouraged people to come down and “rob” his store as he planned to give away hundreds of t-shirts. He is known for his high profile marketing campaigns and this certainly attracted attention with youngsters arriving by 11pm on Christmas Day to be first in the queue when the shop opened at 9am the next day.
Footage shows people bursting through the doors of the shop on Shafto Lane, with a pile of bodies at the front door as people were knocked over – but fortunately nobody was badly injured. There was even one person who had turned up well prepared wearing a bicycle helmet and wearing shoulder pads.
“We wanted to give our customers something fun. We made the entire store free. There were 400 items to ‘steal’,” he told The West Australian. “It was gone in 30 seconds. It was crazy. Just a stampede of people.” He added that the police this year were “fine” with what happened. Clips shared on social media also showed bizarre scenes of people drinking milk and raw eggs from shoes, throwing food at each other and also shaving heads.
Last year Mr Bradshaw said there had been trouble with the police while they had filmed a mock robbery and that this time around they had been more careful. “We always do a Boxing Day sale. Last year, we did a give-away out the back of a truck. This year we wanted something that ideally wouldn’t get us in trouble,” he said. “Cops came today and they were fine with it. Touch wood no one got injured.”
But not everybody was happy and one mum complained that her son had been “punched in the head” during the stampede. “My son was punched in the head and had his items stolen by a young adult thug,” she wrote on Instagram. “I get what you’re trying to do but not having any control over violence is just not ok.”