Then when Scott took the stage, the crowd seemed to rush to the front, trying to get closer to the stage, said Nick Johnson, a high school senior from the Houston suburb of Friendswood who was at the concert with friends. People in the Houston crowd reported lots of pushing and shoving during the performances leading up to Scott’s set. Other past crowd catastrophes include the deaths of 97 people in an overcrowded Hillsborough Stadium in 1989 in Sheffield, England, and numerous disasters connected with the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia. The deaths called to mind a 1979 concert by The Who where 11 people died as thousands of fans tried to get into Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum. He said he usually does not look at eyewitness reports when in the early stages of analyzing an incident because emotions can cloud the picture, and witnesses can see only what’s immediately around them. Keith Still, a visiting professor of crowd science at the United Kingdom’s University of Suffolk, has testified as an expert witness in court cases involving crowds. The crowd is often running either away from a perceived threat or toward something they want, such as a performer, before hitting a barrier. Then “people began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic.”Įxperts who have studied deaths caused by crowd surges say they are often a result of density - too many people packed into a small space. Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said the crowd’s movement toward the stage caused panic and some injuries. He called the disaster “a tragedy on many different levels” and said it was too early to draw conclusions about what went wrong.
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The dead ranged in age from 14 to 27, and 13 people were still hospitalized, Mayor Sylvester Turner said. Goods said she was so desperate to get out that she bit a man on the shoulder to get him to move. You’re trying to breathe, but you can’t,” Goods said. All of a sudden, your ribs are being crushed. “As soon as he jumped out on the stage, it was like an energy took over and everything went haywire. Niaara Goods, 28, said the crowd surged as a timer clicked down to the start of the performance.