Comments on: Kid Trapped In WalMart Vending Machine

By: alphardee

alphardee — Thu, 09 Oct 2008 00:49:03 +0000

I worked at this Walamrt, yes there was a manager on duty, no we did not have keys, yes the vendor was called, a locksmith called by the police got him out, no the mother didnt buy the camera she took it (shoplifted), and the reason she was there is she was on house arrest-probation and wanted to avoid getting in trouble (which she didnt) and yes there is supposely a video that shows some of the plight of the little guy getting in there (bad angle and doesnt show everything) and mother was not seen in it around the child…this was turned over to the state att. office

By: Stanley Levin

Stanley Levin — Wed, 25 Oct 2006 01:13:41 +0000

This isn’t the same Dvorak who used to write for PC magazine is it?

By: bennie

bennie — Wed, 21 Jun 2006 19:37:57 +0000

I thought it was pretty cool myself. I would have been shocked to see my child in a machine like that but nowadays people don’t discipline their kids anyway and so the kids think anything is ok. As far as the old people at a funeral in hawaiian shirts and shorts maybe those old people were trying to honor the deceased wishes. Maybe he wasn’t a “dark suit” person. I think that’s cool too. Who says a funeral has to be sad. It should be a celebration of one’s life on this earth. Who says you have to wear dark colors to funerals either? I don’t think we should judge what people wear especially if we don’t know the people and the situation.

By: Cathy

Cathy — Fri, 27 May 2005 13:22:16 +0000

Well, for whoever said that the large city Walmarts don’t have traffic at that hour, you are WRONG. I live in a MAJOR CITY, since our metro area is several million people… and our Walmarts have people in them 24/7. And YES people do take their children out at ANY hour of the night or day… In their pajamas. Some people who work odd shifts and have toddlers/babies who don’t have to get up and go to school the next day consider this perfectly normal. (Not that I do, but hey, what do I know?) Heck, some of the parents don’t even bother with real shoes, but wear bedroom slippers out in public. (Which just makes me crazy!) The fad with young girls seems to be those stupid wild printed PJ pants… in the middle of the day… in stores and businesses… it drives me NUTS! But considering that I was at a funeral in Florida recently at a military cemetary and the people in the next funeral line over were wearing golf shirts and bright colored “hawaiian” shirts, sandals, and shorts… I have to wonder what exactly IS happening to our sense of propriety these days. I mean these were OLD people, who obviously were raised in the day of the unspoken rule “you wear a dark SUIT to a funeral”, and yet if this goes on… how whacked out can we consider sleepwear in public? At least in the case of sleepwear in public it is not considered disrespectful to the dead or their family! Anyway, I think the whole story is fishy… Yeah, I know that the news reported it, but it sounds WAY WRONG to me… Like a publicity stunt. I’d have to see the child and see the machine to believe that you could that easily climb into a claw machine. Especially since the prizes were small ones in the photos, and those are not usually found in a machine large enough to even consider allowing a kid of that size (yes, Virginia, inside of a machine that kid looks HUGE) to climb in. Not to mention that most claw machines have a baffle or drop down door that swings up into the way to prevent people from just reaching up into the machine and taking things… It all sounds VERY fishy to me. And I have known some small interaction with the news media… at least enough to know that they don’t CARE about the truth as much as about the story. (I’ve been interviewed three times for the news and they did not care so much about the truth as getting a “good picture” and getting the story BEFORE the other networks got there.) I’d wait around and see what the final outcome of any video survelliance check had to say before I closed the book on this story.

By: DJ

DJ — Tue, 24 May 2005 10:01:38 +0000

I’m a night assistant for a Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania:

-There should’ve been at least one assistant on during that shift. If not, something’s fishy there.

-Wal-Mart employees don’t have keys to the vending machines. The best options in that case would be to either try to contact the local vendor, which may be difficult at that time of night, or, better yet, just call a locksmith.

-Having worked overnights in Wal-Mart, I can say a child being in Wal-Mart at that time is definitely not a rarity.

By the way, how did they get him out?

By: Ed Campbell

Ed Campbell — Tue, 24 May 2005 04:21:36 +0000

This also jogs one of my pet peeves — the incompetence of outfits like AP — which didn’t pick up the story until Sunday. They just went ahead and distributed it without any dateline other than their own — as if it had just happened.

There are a few news services which work at reporting news. AP just doesn’t happen to be one of them.

By: Hank

Hank — Mon, 23 May 2005 14:57:38 +0000

I’ve always wondering what THE HECK parents are thinking when I see them with their small children out after midnight.

Even when our daughter is sick, I don’t take her to Walmart at 3 am!

By: Dick D

Dick D — Mon, 23 May 2005 14:13:55 +0000

Didn’t Buzz Light Year pull this off in the first Toy Story. Oh the stuff our kids see and try to emulate…………… Us adults would never try something we see in a movie…..

By: sapphoto

sapphoto — Mon, 23 May 2005 00:20:47 +0000

I know the story and am working the story. Police and home office of WalMart in Bentonville AR have surveillance video. We are tracking down a claim that video shows mom helping kid into machine. Also there is word that little Jimmy’s dad was also there. Yet there is no mention of him. Local TV station claims family requested said video from WalMart.

By: MAFDG

MAFDG — Sun, 22 May 2005 23:05:19 +0000

YEP

By: Sound the alarm

Sound the alarm — Sun, 22 May 2005 15:51:04 +0000

I think little jimmy needs a real honest beating for being a pain in the fundament.

By: Mike Voice

Mike Voice — Sat, 21 May 2005 22:51:48 +0000

To Mike T.

Sounds like a friend of my wife. Her husband got re-assigned from a job here in Oregon – near Portland – to a small town in the mid-west.

She is amazed/depressed that the only two places – outside of church – which people can socialize, in that particular town, are the Applebee’s and the WalMart.

By: site admin

site admin — Sat, 21 May 2005 20:03:27 +0000

Well, the missing piece to the collapse puzzle will be an inevitable world pandemic flu of some sort. SARS is a good example of how easily people panic and it was nothing. People will stop going to these big stores which will be perceived as germ-centers and this Mega-Mart thing and Walmart in particular will be killed overnight. You watch.

As for the phenomenon above “being anywhere” — not true. In the drug-riddled cosmopolitan areas nobody goes shopping at 3 AM because they run into whack jobs and heroin addicts. This episode in the article is a pure middle-America phenomenon.

By: Carmi

Carmi — Sat, 21 May 2005 18:57:05 +0000

This entry, as well as its accompanying list of comments from readers, serves as further proof that megastores and the semi-capable brains that staff them are continuing to drive society toward an eventual cultural implosion.

It may as well be anywhere, which is the most frightening realization in all of this.

By: site admin

site admin — Sat, 21 May 2005 17:02:53 +0000

Mike T, You’re scarin’ me!