8 Die, 28 Hurt in Melee at N.Y. College Gym

What began as an evening of fun ended Saturday with eight dead after a stampede by people attending a charity basketball game featuring rap stars. At least 28 people were injured in the incident at City College of New York in Harlem, police said.

Witnesses described a scene of pandemonium and chaos as hundreds of young people attempted to push through a door leading into the gym. “People were all over. People fell down and they couldn’t get no air,” one young man said in a television interview. “Everyone was trying to get to one door, so everybody was getting trampled on, stepped on.”

Police Capt. Daniel Carlin, who was at the scene, said that six of the dead and many of the injured apparently were crushed or trampled at or near the entrance to the stairs leading to the gym. “What happened was the doors were closed, and they were funneling in more people than they could handle. There was a crush at the doorway,” Carlin said.

One witness said: “You had like 600 or 700 people rushing one door.”

The trouble apparently started after a large group of people became upset that the line into the game was not moving fast enough. Recorded music was being played inside, leading many to think that the game had actually started, when in fact it had not.

“They started fighting, everybody started pushing,” said one young woman. “They didn’t know how to act . . . they acted crazy.”

Charrisse Miles, 21, told the Associated Press that a group of people began pushing against the doors, swarming into the foyer of the gym.

“The crowd was pushing up against the doors and the walls trying to get in,” Miles said, adding that she saw about 20 people passed out on the floor.

Miles said the event was sold out and heard there were about 2,500 ticket-holders. Police and paramedics estimated the crowd at between 3,000 and 6,000.

“It was like a plane crash without a plane,” said Sy Collins, one of the first city Emergency Medical Services workers on the scene.

Kay Morgan, 19, a student at Temple University in Philadelphia, described the foyer where the crush occurred as a “bottleneck.”

“There was just a lot of people coming to get in,” Morgan told the Associated Press. “A lot of people didn’t even realize that there were people on the floor.”

The injured were rushed to at least half a dozen area hospitals, including Harlem Hospital, Columbia Presbyterian Hospital and St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center. Two people who were injured later died at the hospitals where they were being treated, authorities said.

Some witnesses contended that the event was poorly managed and that not enough security guards or police were around to handle the crowds.

But New York Mayor David N. Dinkins, who showed up at the scene after news spread of the catastrophe, praised police effort to control the chaos.

“Police officers were not in the building,” he said. “They were called in and, in fact, came in the back (because they) couldn’t get in the front, frankly. They did just wonderful, wonderful heroic work.” Dinkins promised an investigation of the incident.

The event was promoted as the Heavy D and Puff Daddy Celebrity Charity Basketball Game. Heavy D and Puff Daddy are rap stars and each was to captain a team.

Other celebrities such as Big Daddy Kane, Father MC and members of Bel Biv Devoe, Run DMC and Boyz II Men were also scheduled to play in the event.

Heavy D, whose name is Dwight Myers, “wished to express his deepest regret to his fans and the families of those who were injured and killed,” Marilyn Laverty, the rapper’s spokeswoman, told the Associated Press.

He has started a fund to help the families of the dead and plans to hold a benefit concert, Laverty said.