Concert stampede leaves six dead, over 50 injured

COR I N ALDO, ITALY » Teenagers panicked before a rap concert at a jammed Italian disco, setting off a stampede that killed five of them and a mother who had brought her daughter to the event, authorities and survivors said. Fifty-three people were reported injured, including 13 in serious condition.

Video showed scores of teenagers rushing out a door and surging toward a low wall near an exit at the Blue Lantern disco in the central Italian town of Corinaldo, near Ancona on the Adriatic coast. The barrier then gives way and teenagers tumble over it, falling on each other.

Several survivors said panic spread through the late-night crowd after someone unleashed an irritant spray. Investigators said they were checking those reports.

The bodies of the trampled victims were found near a low wall, Ancona Firefighters Cmdr. Dino Poggiali said. State radio said most of the dead had their skulls crushed in the melee.

The victims — three girls and two boys — ranged in age from 14 to 16, and the mother who was killed was 39, said Col. Cristian Carrozza, commander of the Ancona province Carabinieri paramilitary police.

The stampede occurred shortly after 1 a.m., less than 30 minutes before the concert by Italian rapper Sfera Ebbasta was to begin.

Authorities said organizers had sold far too many tickets for the space. Ancona Chief Prosecutor Monica Garulli told reporters that about 1,400 tickets were sold but the disco was able to hold only about 870 people.

Later, Premier Giuseppe Conte, who visited the scene, said the nightclub had three rooms but used only one for the concert, and it only holds 469 people.

While prosecutors investigate “the government must ask itself what to do that such tragedies must never happen again,” Conte said.

The woman who was killed, Eleanora Girolimini, had four children and had accompanied her 11-yearold daughter to the concert, her husband, Paolo, told reporters. The girl was treated for a knee injury.

Outside the hospital where the bodies were brought, he lashed out at the event’s organizers, saying that many at the event were drunk.

“Four children now are without their mother, and one of them is still nursing,” he said. “It was way overcrowded, and alcohol abounded.”

ANSA said hospital doctors treating the injured said some survivors had burns apparently caused by an irritant spray.

An 18-year-old survivor — who left the hospital in a wheelchair because of a leg injury — said that whatever the spray was, it left her and others unable to breathe. People started to panic and flee, she said.

Doctors at Ancona’s main hospital said the most critically injured from the concert, all between 14 and 20 years old, suffered cranial and chest traumas, while others had arm or leg injuries.

Sfera Ebbasta wrote on Twitter that he was “deeply pained” by the tragedy. He thanked rescuers and offered his support to the families of the dead and the injured.