Three Woman Dead Following A Crowd Crush at Steve Aoki's Halloween Show

2 November 2012

Steve Aoki's Halloween spectacular in Madrid, Spain has unfortunately ended in tragedy following a crowd crush.

In an incident similar to the fatal crush at 2010′s Love Parade Festival, in which 21 partygoers lost their lives, Thriller Music Park’s Halloween party has resulted in the death of 3 young woman. Reports suggest the event was not over-capacity although attendees have claimed it was overcrowded. The venue itself had been authorised to host 10,600 people (out of a total capacity of 12,000) and a spokesperson said that the event was not sold out. Some attendees however complained that the space was overcrowded; on Twitter, one attendee estimated that there were 20,000 people crammed into the arena.

A El País / Spin report covered the incident in depth: “Around 4am roughly 50 medical personnel were called to the scene to respond to two victims who were unconscious and in cardiac arrest; when they arrived, they found five people in distress. El País reports that their injuries were due to “trauma by crushing, possibly having suffered a fall and being trampled.” Two of the victims were treated on site and declared dead after 30 minutes of attempted resuscitation; a third died shortly upon arrival at a local hospital.”

“Police are still investigating the disaster, but signs point to a disturbance in the audience that led to a stampede; it is believed that a flare was set off, triggering a panic in the venue. The crush apparently did not take place on the dance floor itself, but in a “passage of terror” located on a lower floor of the building, which connected to the main floor via stairway.”

“One concertgoer reported that only one of the exits was open. “There was a human bottleneck at the only exit, because all the others were closed, sealed,” she told El País. “There were people crying, crushed; security personnel dragging away those that were trapped.” A comment on El País‘ Facebook page reports, “I was in the bottleneck that formed and it was inhuman. You couldn’t move forward, because there were people lying on the ground, or backward, because people kept pushing. We were there for like half an hour, until it occurred to someone to open another door, and people began to exit that way.” Another commenter notes, “People inside [the bottleneck] were vomiting, fainting—chaos.”

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