CHICAGO—Security guards using pepper spray to break up a fight in an illegal nightclub early Monday triggered a stampede that killed 21 people and injured more than 50, police said, as hundreds of club-goers tried to flee the bar only to be trapped in an overcrowded stairwell.
Most of the dead appeared to have been asphyxiated and some suffered heart attacks, officials said, as they were trampled in the stairway leading from the second floor dance area of Club Epitome, a high-priced bar and restaurant that caters primarily to black patrons.
Witnesses said a second-floor door was locked and chained, and fire officials said other doors were illegally locked or blocked. The throng tried to flee down the stairwell that led to the front door of the club, known as E2. The second floor—where the patrons had been dancing—was ordered closed in the summer for repeated safety violations.
By the time firefighters arrived, the lone exit was clogged with the injured and the dead, and bodies were piled against the double-paned glass.
“It was chaos,” one patron said a few hours after the disaster. “It was madness.”
The stampede is reminiscent of other incidents in which large numbers of people were trampled to death. In 1991, nine people in New York were crushed to death in a gymnasium stairwell while awaiting a celebrity basketball game. In 1979, 11 died in Cincinnati as a crowd rushed for the best seats at a concert by The Who.
“Chicago is a city in deep mourning today,” said Police Supt. Terry Hilliard. “While these deaths were sudden our investigation will not be over quickly. We will get to the bottom of this.”
City building codes limited the number of people in the first-floor restaurant to 327. Authorities said Monday they did not know the once-legal capacity of the dance area, but in July a state court ordered the owners not to use the second floor for any public events. Estimates of the number of patrons in the club ranged from 500 to as high as 1,500.
According to business records the club is owned by Lesly Motors, which is next door, and Chicago attorney Dwain Kyles and his business partner Calvin Hollins.
Hollins, the president of Epitome, served prison time in the 1980s for shooting a man outside another nightclub.
“The owner knows damn well he’s not to open that second-floor facility,” said Chicago Fire Commissioner James Joyce.
The panicked exodus began about 2:15 a.m., when security guards stepped in to break up an altercation that witnesses said involved two women. Some witnesses said the guards sprayed a crowd-control agent into the crowded room, though police could not confirm that.
At 2:23 a.m., a 911 call reporting “a pregnant woman down” was routed to the Chicago Fire Department, Joyce said.
“The first companies on the scene saw other people down on the stairwell and people against the doors trying to get out,” Joyce said.
Soon, some two dozen ambulances, a dozen fire trucks and numerous other emergency vehicles arrived at the club on South Michigan Avenue, just minutes from the city’s Loop business district.
One fire engine drove to the back of the building, Joyce said, where firefighters smashed the locks or chains of several locked doors with sledgehammers. Patrons burst through some of the doors. Inside one door, near the kitchen, the firefighters discovered four people in cardiac arrest who had apparently been dragged there.
Witnesses said the crowd fled because the guards used pepper spray in the hot, crowded room.
“People were throwing up everywhere,” said one young man, who declined to give his name. “People throwing up and running and tripping everywhere. I saw people lying everywhere.”
Three people were pronounced dead at the scene in early morning, though firefighters said they had carried out several more who appeared to already have perished. By late in the day the number of dead stood at 21.
Ambulances sped victims to nine different hospitals, where relatives of the victims collapsed with grief in the waiting rooms and sobbed as they ran through the emergency room doors.
“These bodies were smashed faces, torsos, legs. It’s like a steamroller rolled over them,” the Rev. Eric Sloss told The Chicago Tribune as he comforted families at the University of Illinois Medical Center at Chicago. “It’s horrific.”
Formerly called La Mirage, Heroes, and The Clique, the club has been one of Chicago’s most prominent, priciest black restaurants and dance venues for 17 years, attracting such hip-hop and pop music figures as P. Diddy, Jay Z. and R. Kelly.
Security was often tight at the club, with guards locking doors to keep people from sneaking in to avoid cover charges as high as $100, and to help them control crowds, club-goers said. The Epitome and its predecessors also have been the scene of numerous crimes inside as well as outside, according to police records.
In September, a 22-year-old woman was shot to death outside the club.
Since 2000, police have responded to calls at the club 80 times, most for fights, Hilliard said.
As police interviewed dozens of people and viewed videotape from the club in trying to determine what the fight was about and how security guards handled the situation, fire and building investigators focused on alleged safety violations. They found many, officials said.
Joyce, the fire commissioner, said the restaurant part of the club has “some history of (safety) violations (but) it doesn’t appear to be an overwhelming number of violations.”
When inspectors last visited the restaurant, in the fall, they found no problems. They did not inspect the upper level, he said, because it was not supposed to be in operation.
On Monday, however, they discovered exit doors throughout the building that were locked, doors that were chained, doors blocked by boxes and others by bags of laundry.
