By IANS/EFE,
Madrid: The crowd at the Madrid Arena was 58 percent larger than the facility’s legal capacity during the Halloween party that ended in tragedy with the deaths of four young women who were crushed in a stampede.
The final count of people admitted to the party in the Madrid Arena was 16,791, far exceeding the permitted number for the event of 10,600 people, court sources said Wednesday.
Lawyers for the families of victims Rocio Ona and Belen Langdon said that the count showed that the allowed number of partygoers was “immensely” exceeded, and the promoter of the event, Miguel Angel Flores, lied when he said that only 9,650 entry tickets had been sold.
The attorneys agreed that to the almost 16,800 people known to be present must be added the 2,000 or 3,000 people who allegedly snuck in without paying and those who entered with invitations from the DJs or others, bringing the total number of people at the Madrid Arena to about 20,000.
“We’re talking about a very serious act, that a number of entry tickets were intentionally sold knowing that it exceeded by almost double the permitted and specified capacity,” Ona family attorney Felipe Moreno said.