Walmart: The Setting For Some Of The Nation’s Strangest Events In 2015

Weird things happen at Walmart stores.

That’s the gist of a Washington Post piece from yesterday (Dec. 28), which takes an incident that occurred Sunday at a Walmart location in Lecanto, Florida, when a young woman was arrested for cruising around the store, while consuming $32.36 worth of shoplifted wine, sushi, cinnamon rolls and an entire rotisserie chicken, as well as being in possession of two empty syringes allegedly used to inject crystal meth, as a jumping off point for an exploration for some of the bizarre happenings that occur at the low-price retail giant’s locations throughout the country — which currently tally 4,655, about four times the amount of Target stores in the U.S.

Two days before the year even began, tragedy struck inside an Idaho Walmart when a two-year-old inadvertently killed his own mother with a gun he found in her purse.

Outside an Arizona Walmart in April, family (and Christian band) members assaulted a Walmart employee then disarmed and shot a police officer who arrived on the scene.

In November, a man was charged for throwing an explosive device into a Mississippi Walmart.

Two babies were born inside of Walmarts this year, The Washington Post reports: one in Tennessee and one in Alabama.

On Valentine’s Day, a 75-year-old man proposed to his ex-wife (also 75 years old) at a Walmart store in Fort Smith, Arkansas; she said yes.

In Michigan, a woman lived inside of a 24-hour Walmart for two days after her son kicked her out of the house (she was eventually booted from that makeshift dwelling, as well, after being spotted on security cameras).

“I’m surprised somebody hasn’t already been doing that because they have everything,” a shopper told a Texas NBC affiliate following a similar, earlier incident in Colorado. “You can exist in Walmart.”