To all those who trampled Jdimytai Damour to death yesterday: This is who you murdered

I'm haunted by the murder of Jdimytai Damour yesterday by a thundering mob of greedy bargain-hunters in Valley Stream, New York yesterday. I find myself wondering why a temporary worker was the one opening the doors. When I was in retail in the late 1970's, it was always a store manager who unlocked the doors in the morning. Why did this task fall to this man? Did the management of this Wal-Mart store expect this kind of stempede and set him up to be the fall guy?

Here is the man who sacrificed his life yesterday so that a bunch of soulless pigs could grab up as much cheap crap as they could carry:

Jdimytai Damour, 34, the Wal-Mart worker who died Friday after shoppers stampeded in a Valley Stream store, was an easygoing, helpful man who loved poetry, friends and family said.

Family friend Ronald Jean Myrthil, of Bridgeport, Conn., said Damour came to pick him up after he had staggered across the Brooklyn Bridge, fleeing Manhattan on Sept. 11, 2001. Another time, when Myrthil needed to go to the hospital, Damour took him.

Damour's father, a Queens school bus driver, is at a loss to understand his son's fate.

"I don't know what happened to him. He's gone. Only God knows what happened to him," said his father, Ogera Charles, of Fresh Meadows.

A Freeport High School graduate, Damour attended Nassau Community College for a year, his father said.

His family roots are in Haiti, and he had a brother and four sisters, said Nicole Jean, 60, a Rosedale woman who described herself as a close family friend. Damour's mother, who lives in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, is flying up this weekend.

Myrthil, who is Jean's son, said Damour was a big man and had no apparent health problems. Damour did construction work for a time and installed fences, he said.

Damour loved poetry, and he was a fan of the late novelist Donald Goines, the friend said.

He was easygoing - a nice guy, Myrthil said. "A very good kid.