Itaewon Halloween tragedy: Seoul police received 355 missing person reports
SEOUL: Seoul metropolitan authorities received 355 missing person reports believed to be victims of a stampede during the Halloween festival in Itaewon, Saturday night.
Citing a Yonhap report , Seoul authorities said further investigations are underway immediately.
“Approximately 60 officers were ordered to go to 50 hospitals to provide support to the family members of the victims who died, the majority in their 20s,” the representative said in the statement.
Meanwhile, the AFP news agency reports that new questions have emerged about the security system weaknesses at the event.
Home Minister Lee Sang-min said police officers were also deployed to other locations in the district on the night of the incident.
“I am not sure about the exact number of policemen who are in Itaewon, however, a reasonable amount has been deployed to Gwanghwamun, where people are expected to fill the area to protest,” he said.
He added that the police did not expect the number of visitors to be that large for the Halloween event and it was understood that the police officers deployed to guard were almost the same as the scale of the previous event.
In the meantime, Dr. Lee Beom-suk who is one of the health workers at the scene of the incident said there were too many victims so the workers had to ask for help from the public to give breathing aid to the victims.
“I could not feel the victim’s pulse or breathing and most of them had bloody noses. When I did CPR, I also pumped blood from their mouths,” he said.
source – Faida Rahim
