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The Unoifficial Apple Weblog reports:

No, you aren’t reading The Onion. Yes, there really was a stampede. No one was seriously injured, but this morning’s $50 iBook sale was an insane mob scene by all accounts. Lines of parked cars started to form around 1:30am and by 7:00am, when the sale was to begin, the line was said to be more than a 1/2 mile long, while thousands of people rushed the gate for an opportunity to spend $50 on a 4-year old iBook that stood a good chance of barely being worth even that little. There are reports of baby strollers being tipped over and mangled and one old man in a walker was reportedly trampled to the ground! More after the jump…

One of our readers, Jason Coleman, sent us this first-hand account of the scene:

“My wife and I just came from the Henrico County iBook sale. It was absolutely insane. The estimate was that about 12,000 people showed up. There were a number of people injured when people rushed the gates. [link]”

“We left after 4 hours of baking in the sun, empty-handed. There were some rumors that the actual number was something less than 1,000, but I couldn’t say for sure. However many, there were many times that in people who wanted one and the crowd control… well it wasn’t being controlled really. Just the police shouting at people to keep backing up, even though there was no where to go. Insane. Your readers should be very glad that they didn’t come. Just wait and buy one for cheap on eBay next week.”

Phi sent us a link to some video footage. It’s not pretty.

I just hope Henrico County and everyone involved in this fiasco has learned how to handle future sales so that this never happens again. They really did muck this up pretty badly.

Any other eyewitnesses who’d like to share with us?

Thanks to everyone who kept us informed on today’s events in VA.