Terror Alert May Have Caused Panic - Results in 21 Deaths

At least 21 people have been killed and many others injured in a stampede at a Chicago nightclub, police say.
Panic broke out when Mace or pepper spray was released into the air on the upper floor of the two-storey Epitome club on the city's South Side.


You could see a mound of people - people were stacking on top of each other, screaming and gagging



Eyewitness Cory Thomas

The dead are believed to have been trampled or crushed as people rushed for the exits, according to emergency workers.

Dozens of other people were injured - some critically - in the stampede at about 0200 local time (0800 GMT).

Fire Commander Will Knight said the total number of casualties was unclear because many people with lesser injuries had been taken to hospitals by family or friends.

One witness, Cory Thomas, was outside the Epitome club waiting to pick up two friends when he saw people inside the club being pushed up against the glass front door.


"You could see a mound of people. People were stacking on top of each other, screaming and gagging, I guess from the pepper spray," he said.

"The door got blocked because there were too many people stacked up against it," Mr Thomas added, quoted by Associated Press news agency.

Attack fears

Commander Knight, said the panic appears to have started when someone released pepper spray or Mace into the air in the early hours of Monday.

The club had been packed ahead of the Presidents' Day public holiday on Monday.


Many of the injured suffered breathing problems
One report said the spray had been used by club security officers to break up a fight among a group of young women.


A BBC correspondent in Washington says the high level of concern of a terrorist attack in the US - possibly using biological or chemical weapons - may have added to the panic when the substance was sprayed.

Clubbers rushed down a staircase to try to get out. When some fell, the crowd simply poured on top of them, witnesses said.

Some reports said the crush may have been exacerbated because only one staircase was used and an exit door was blocked.

There had been more than 1,500 people in the Epitome Night Club at the time of the disaster, officials said.

Medical teams from local hospitals were sent to the club with ambulances and paramedics to treat the casualties.

The incident is one of the deadliest of its kind in the United States.

In December 1979, 11 people were killed in Cincinnati in a crush to get into a concert by British rock group The Who.

In December 1991, nine people were crushed to death in a gymnasium stairwell while awaiting a celebrity basketball game at New York's City College.