Eleven emergency callers used Korean word for ‘crushed to death’ 13 times hours before incident
South Korea’s national police agency has raided local police departments in the capital, Seoul, and the city’s Yongsan district office as it investigates whether official ineptitude contributed to a crowd surge that killed 156 people in the neighbourhood of Itaewon.
The raids came a day after the agency acknowledged Seoul police failed to act for hours despite receiving at least 11 emergency calls from pedestrians warning about a swelling crowd of Halloween revellers getting out of control ahead of the crush on Saturday in a narrow alley near Hamilton Hotel.
11 110 (911) calls were made to the police and they were ignored leaving victims to find escape routes out of the growing crowd. Additionally regular police aren't usually used for crowd control in Korea that task is left to the Riot Police. Noksapyeong station is at the top of a hill just above the U.S. Armies old Yongsan Garrison.
His agency also released the transcripts of 11 calls placed to the police’s 112 emergency hotline by pedestrians in Itaewon on Saturday, the first made at about 6.30pm, four hours before the crush near Hamilton Hotel.
The unidentified caller, who was near a shop in the alley where the crush occurred, pleaded for police to enforce controls on the area because “too many people are going up and down and it’s too scary”.
“People aren’t able to come down but (people) are also pushing up and I think (they) could get crushed to death,” the caller said.
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