We have some tragic news today following a Steve Aoki show in Madrid yesterday. At the Halloween day celebration, three women died of injuries sustained in the middle of a crowd surge, and two more people remain in critical condition, reports Spain’s El País. Spin reports that “one concertgoer reported that only one of the exits was open. ‘There was a human bottleneck at the only exit, because all the others were closed, sealed,’ she told El País. ‘There were people crying, crushed; security personnel dragging away those that were trapped.’ A user on El País’ Facebook page commented, “I was in the bottleneck that formed and it was inhuman. You couldn’t move forward, because there were people lying on the ground, or backward, because people kept pushing. We were there for like half an hour, until it occurred to someone to open another door, and people began to exit that way.”
We will update with any more information we find about this tragedy, and we wish the best for anyone who was involved.
Update 12:32 PST 11/1/12: Steve Aoki posted the following to his Facebook page:
After my performance last night at Thriller Music Park at the Madrid Arena in Spain, I was devastated to hear that three people had died during a crowd rush at one of the exits. The safety of my fans has always been my top priority and had I known that there was any distress putting people in jeopardy within the venue I would have ended my show immediately. My show in Bilbao, Spain tonight will be cancelled out of respect for those who lost their lives and those who are injured. I would like to express my deepest condolences and heart felt prayers to the families and loved ones during this difficult time.
Here are a few comments pulled from the El Pais’ facebook page by Spin:
“I was in the bottleneck that formed and it was inhuman. You couldn’t move forward, because there were people lying on the ground, or backward, because people kept pushing. We were there for like half an hour, until it occurred to someone to open another door, and people began to exit that way.”
“There was a human bottleneck at the only exit, because all the others were closed and sealed. There were people crying, crushed; security personnel dragging away those that were trapped.”