WOMAN DEAD, TWO PEOPLE INJURED AT DUNEDIN PARTY
Police are trying to establish how a woman died in Dunedin overnight. They have also confirmed that two people were seriously injured. Emergency services arrived at the Dundas Street property shortly before midnight after the occupants asked for help to shut the party down.
A student who called the police said it had started to get too large. “There was a rush of people trying to get out because they thought the security was coming ... it started to get quite built up round the door and people started falling over and we were trying to get people out. “People who were on top of the pile, we were trying to pull them out but there were just too many and that’s when we called the cops ...” When the police arrived they dispersed a lot of the people.
At the same time the student had helped carry a woman out of the house who needed to be resuscitated. Sadly, the attempts had been unsuccessful, he said, and he was feeling very affected by her death. He had brought flowers to the scene yesterday as a mark of respect for her.
During the panic other partygoers were also struggling to breathe, he said.
“There were people suffering from claustrophobia - you could see their body temperature hot as.” Another person who was at the house said partygoers could barely move, and were being forced around by the surge of the crowd. Another witness was driving past the house when the police arrived. “There was just police everywhere; it was chaotic I’ve never seen it like that - it was stressful. There were people just scattered everywhere.” Another woman spoken to by RNZ said she was one of the last to leave. She described the scene as looking “like a bomb had gone off” with people fleeing, leaving behind their shoes in the chaos.
RNZ’s reporter said shoes remained strewn across the footpath yesterday, among broken glass and rubbish.
She said people have started laying bouquets of flowers in front of the property.
One group left their flowers before picking up a shoe and driving off. One person described the party as standing room only with about 200 party goers crammed into the house. A student at the party, who did not want to be named, told the Otago
Daily Times there was panic during the incident as party-goers tried to get out of the house. It “felt like an hour” for him to get out, he said. He saw three people being taken away by ambulance.
RNZ spoke to a Dunedin student, who wasn’t at the party, who said it was the last ever student party at the house, known as The Manor.