Concert stampede leaves 6 dead, over 50 hurt

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 very serious condition.

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

Video on state TV RaiNews24 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 a cascade of teenagers tumble over it, falling on top of each other.

The bodies of the trampled victims were all found near a low wall, Ancona Firefighters Cmdr. Dino Poggiali told Sky TG24 News. 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. a 13-year-old girl who was kidnapped last month from a North Carolina mobile home park.

The FBI said early Saturday that Michael Ray McLellan has been charged in connection with the kidnapping and murder of Hania Noelia Aguilar. The announcement comes the same day that a memorial service for Aguilar is set to take place at a local high school.

The 34-year-old McLellan faces first-degree murder, rape and eight other felony charges. He’d been released from prison in June and was still on parole from a 2017 felony breaking and entering conviction, according to the News & Observer of Raleigh.

He was previously convicted in 2007 of assault with a deadly weapon and was released on parole in 2016, the newspaper reported.

He is being held without bond in the Robeson County Detention Center. He will appear in court at the Robeson County Courthouse on Monday.

Bobo Antic / Associated Press Relatives and friends comfort each others outside the morgue in Corinaldo, Italy, on Saturday. A stampede at a rap concert in an overcrowded disco in central Italy killed six teenagers and a woman who had accompanied her daughter to the event early Saturday, police said.