Emergency Calls to Police Were Placed Hours Before Deadly South Korea Crowd Surge: 'People Are Going to Die'
Lee Jin-man/AP/Shutterstock
Several hours before the crowd surge in South Korea that killed over 156 people, panicked warning calls were made to police, The Washington Post reported, citing transcripts released on Tuesday.
Seoul's mass-casualty incident, which also injured at least 157, prompted South Korean President Yoon Suk-yeol to order his government to provide disaster medical emergency assistance, according to the BBC, New York Times, and CNN.
"The top priority is to evacuate and save the victims. We should take them to urgent medical treatment as quickly as possible," the president said to his cabinet, per the Times. However, they were tragically much too late for scores of Halloween revelers.
At approximately 6:34 p.m., the string of desperate pleas started rolling in.
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"There are a lot of people going up and down this alley. I'm very nervous about it," one caller said, expressing fear over the worsening situation in the capital city's Itaewon district. "I think people might be crushed. I barely escaped, but there are too many people. I think you need to intervene."
JEON HEON-KYUN/EPA-EFE/Shutterstock Steven Blesi and Anne Gieske
At 8:09 p.m., another caller reported that party-goers were injured. "There are so many people here. … It's crazy. People are getting hurt."
As more time passed, the cries for help kept getting more intense and panicked. "Here, we're about to be crushed. It is chaos ... [audible screams]. In Itaewon, in the back road."
Emergency personnel reportedly didn't arrive to the scene to start controlling the crowd until around 11 p.m., a little over four hours after the concerned callers began asking for help.
South Korean media outlets reported that the area was too congested for police to get anywhere near the scene, but many event attendees criticized the lack of personnel they had assigned to the event in the first place, which attracted over 100,000 people to celebrate Halloween in Seoul's popular nightlife district, according to the Post.
Steven Blesi, 20, of Marietta, Ga., was studying abroad in the country when he was killed in the incident over the weekend, his dad Steve Blesi confirms to PEOPLE.
The grieving father tells PEOPLE that his son had "an adventurous spirit" and "could have done anything he wanted in this world."
Courtesy of Steve Blesi
"The world's a darker place without him in it," says Steve, a retired IT director.
Steve first confirmed his son was one of the victims of Saturday's crowd surge in an interview with The Washington Post.
Anne Gieske, a junior nursing student at University of Kentucky, was also studying abroad in Seoul this fall when she was killed in the crush, according to a statement from university president Eli Capilouto.
South Korea's chief of police, Yoon Hee-geun, acknowledged on Tuesday that the crowd control was "inadequate" as more details continue to unfold of the Halloween tragedy.
