Loyd Brown, commander of U.S. Army Garrison Yongsan-Casey, pays tribute at a joint memorial altar for the victims of a crowd crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district at a square in front of a subway station near the scene of the accident on Oct. 31, 2022. (Pool photo) (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Nov. 3 (Korea Bizwire) — A trio of foreign heroes praised for saving more than 30 lives from last Saturday’s tragic crowd crush in Seoul turned out to be American soldiers stationed in South Korea, some survivors said Thursday.
One of the survivors, known only as a twentysomething man living in Cheongju, central South Korea, told Yonhap News Agency he believes the three foreign heroes are U.S. soldiers serving in Camp Casey in Dongducheon, about 50 km north of Seoul.
The man told local media earlier he was pulled out of the chaos in a narrow alleyway in Itaewon before fainting and being carried to safety.
He said he is convinced the heroic Americans are Jarmil Taylor, 40, Jerome Augusta, 34, and Dane Beathard, 32, after belatedly learning of their interviews with French news agency AFP published Sunday.
He said he went to Itaewon on Saturday to enjoy the Halloween festivities with his friends but fell down in the crowd in the narrow alleyway before being crushed for about 15 minutes.
The Cheongju man, who is 182 cm tall and weighs 96 kg, said a strong black man rescued him from the crowd as if pulling radishes from a field.
“The circumstances of the Itaewon disaster and rescue activities that the three U.S. soldiers revealed in their interviews are exactly identical to what I experienced,” he said.
He said he truly wants to meet with the Americans to say thanks to them, noting the number of casualties decreased thanks to their active rescue efforts.
The soldiers told AFP they pulled people out of the “crushed tangles of limbs” in the narrow alleyway for hours and carried them to safety so that emergency responders could perform CPR.
(Yonhap)
