Tens of ambulances pack the streets in Seoul’s Itaewon district after a deadly stampede crushed more than 150 people to death and injured scores of others during Halloween celebrations on Oct. 30, 2022. (Yonhap)
SEOUL, Oct. 31 (Korea Bizwire) — A witness of the deadly Halloween crush in Seoul’s Itaewon district that killed at least 154 people has shared his horrific experience of carrying dead bodies and watching people, many in their 20s, suffocate to death.
“I think I carried, like, 50 bodies,” a man in his 20s working at a store in Itaewon told Yonhap News Agency on Sunday night. “All I could think was that I had to save just one more person.”
At least 133 others were injured in South Korea’s deadliest crowd surge that happened in the famous nightlife district Saturday night, after tens of thousands of people visited the area for Halloween.
The witness, who requested anonymity, said once he had rushed to a narrow 3.2-meter-wide downhill alley, there were already people — some unconscious — trapped and trampled.
“I managed to drag out one person who was buried under the bodies,” he said. “I am really thankful to have been able to save one life.”
The witness — whose store is located right across from the sloped alley — said the crowd was unlike anything he had seen before.
“I felt that the crowd at the alley that day was different from other times,” he said, hoping crowd control could have prevented such a tragedy.
An estimated 100,000 people visited the area, one of the most popular neighborhoods in Seoul, for a night out.
It was the first Halloween event in Seoul in three years after the country lifted many COVID-19 restrictions. Most of the people on the streets were wearing Halloween costumes.
Footage has gone viral of a crowd of partygoers dancing in front of waiting ambulances as emergency crews rushed to save the victims.
“Many people at the time could have thought it was a Halloween performance, even when firefighters were arriving at the scene to perform CPR and the sounds of ‘help me’ were resounding,” he said.
He said most of the crowd at the scene were ordinary people united to save the lives of the young, refusing to share his identity and photo.
“I wasn’t telling a heroic tale,” he said.
(Yonhap)
