A young man who tried to calm down a panicking crowd in a Turin piazza may have been mistaken for a suicide bomber, triggering a stampede in which over 1,500 people were injured.
Video taken Turin’s Piazza San Carlo, where 30,000 Juventus fans were watching the Champions League final on a large screen on Saturday night, showed startled fans backing away from a spot in the square.
As the empty space increases, a young, bare chested man wearing a rucksack can be seen standing alone, his arms raised in the air as if trying to calm the crowd down.
His gesture, however, may have been perceived as that of a suicide bomber about to detonate explosives.
As the crowd flees, he is joined by other young men who also raise their arms, before a woman tries to pull the man away by his arm.
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Italian press reports suggested the bare-chested man may have first joked about a terror attack, prompting the initial panic, before he realised his mistake and tried to calm people down.
Italian media reported the man had been questioned by police, but the Turin magistrate Armando Spataro said today authorities were not formally investigating anyone for sparking the chaos.
As the crowd surged, people were crushed in the panic and witnesses reported fans hitting others to get clear.
Witnesses have also reported hearing a firecracker being let off, which may have added to the panic.
Chiara Appendino, Turin’s mayor, said the cause of the panic was still unknown.
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“What happened in Piazza San Carlo on Saturday evening has really shocked us, not only because a party was transformed into terror and suffering, but also because the cause — which was initially seen as the wicked behaviour of a few fools, carried out amid a global climate of uncertainty —is still unknown,” she said.
A seven year old local boy of Chinese origin, who implored his parents to let him watch Juventus take on Real Madrid in the final — a game Juventus lost 4-1 — is in a coma with a crushed lung after he was trampled in the panic. He is one of about 40 people still in hospital. Hundreds of the wounded suffered cuts as they fell on broken glass bottles.
Police are now reviewing security arrangements for large pop concerts scheduled in Italy this summer, as fears grow of crowd panic fuelled by the recent terror attacks in Manchester and London.