2 people were hospitalized after being stabbed in a New Jersey JCPenney - and the store didn't clean up the blood before letting shoppers return
- Two people were hospitalized after a fight at a JCPenney in a mall in New Jersey this weekend.
- The store allowed customers to return to shop while splatters of blood remained on the floor.
- Violent crime is increasingly becoming an issue for retailers such as Walmart.
Two people were seriously injured in a brawl at a JCPenney in a New Jersey mall this weekend - and it looks like shoppers were allowed to return to browse with blood still on the floor.
Shoppers witnessed a large group of people fighting in Newport Centre Mall in Jersey City on Saturday night, NBC reports. Two young adults were hospitalized for non-life threatening injuries after being stabbed, police said.
The aftermath of the fight are apparent in footage from the JCPenney, with merchandise strewn around the store and blood on the floor in the bedding department.
Bizarrely, CBS 2 reports that shoppers were allowed to return to the JCPenney before the crime scene was cleaned up. Footage shows shoppers walking around on floors covered in splattered blood.
JCPenney did not immediately respond to Business Insider's request for comment.
This isn't the first time there's been a violent brawl at Newport Centre Mall.
In March 2016, the police had to visit the mall to break up a fight that began with a disagreement between a father and an employee dressed as the Easter bunny. Both the costumed employee and the father were arrested after the fight on aggravated assault and disorderly conduct charges, NBC reported.
Concerns regarding violent crime are increasingly becoming an issue for retailers. In 2016, Bloomberg reported that roughly one violent crime happens per day at Walmarts across the country, from arrests related to meth labs hosted in stores to shootings in parking lots.
In the case of Walmart, cost-cutting policies that started in the early 2000s resulted in a drop in store quality, while the loss of greeters and the rise of self-checkout scanners made shoplifting and other illegal activities easier to commit without employees noticing.