Nine killed in a stampede outside a hip-hop celebrity basketball game
It doesnt take an Einstein to know that young people attending a rap concertwho have paid as much as 20 a ticket would not be very happy and easy to control if they were unable to gain admission to the event because it was oversold.Those were the words of Judge Louis C.Benza of the New York State Court of Claims in sorting out the question of civil liability for one of the worst music-related tragedies in recent American history.
Judge Benzas 73-page decision issued seven years after nine young people died in a crowd stampede on this day in 1991 placed 50 percent of the blame for those deaths on the venues owner the City University of New York and 50 percent on the events promoters rapper Dwight Heavy D Myers and the then largely unknown hip-hop impresario Sean Puff Daddy Combs.Shortly after 600 p.m.according to eyewitness accounts the crowd outside broke at least one of the glass doors separating them from the building lobby.Despite the presence of at least 66 New York City Police officers 38 City College campus-security officers and 20 private security guards hired by the events promoters the crowd was able to surge through those doors and rush into the building shortly after 700 p.m.
when the event finally got underway.Once inside the lobby the crowd rushed down a short set of stairs leading to the gymnasium.At the bottom of those stairs however were four swinging doorsthree of them closedthat opened not into the gymnasium but into the stairwell.
While the 3000-strong crowd surged forward obliviously those people who reached the stairwell first were caught in a crush that would leave eight dead on the scene and 29 others injured one of whom would later die of her injuries at St.Lukes Hospital.
