US: Twenty-one people died in a stampede at a Chicago night-club early yesterday when they tried to escape fumes from a crowd-control spray used to break up a fight and were crushed behind blocked and locked doors, officials said.
"People just died in my arms," Ms Tonita Matthews, a young woman who was at the club and tried to help those injured, told an NBC TV crew.
Another young woman who survived told of a man fighting to breathe in the tangle of bodies who asked her to tell his mother he loved her.
Witnesses said a fight broke out between two women, and a security guard used a crowd-control agent, possible pepper spray, to break it up. Patrons began to flee the fumes and were told they had to exit down a steep front stairway.
Some of those trying to flee apparently tripped or fell in that stairwell causing a human avalanche. Bodies, living and dead, piled up behind a double glass exit door that was apparently jammed shut by the crush. Patrons said only one door was open to prevent people from sneaking in without paying.
The dead were "pinned down by a stampeding crowd", said Police Supt Terry Hillard.
Fire Commissioner James Joyce told a news conference there were 21 killed and at least 30 injured. He said there were a "number of fire code violations ... related to locked and blocked doors" at the rear of the building, including one where rescue workers found four people in cardiac arrest after they pried the door open.
Most of those who died, however, were killed at the bottom of the main front door stairwell.
Witnesses said there were an estimated 1,500 party-goers in a second-floor dance hall above the Epitome restaurant on Chicago's near South Side when the stampede occurred. Firemen received the first call for help at 2.23 a.m..
Mr Lamont James, who works for the Chicago park district, said he was trapped for a while in a pile of bodies on the front stairs but managed to escape.
"The bodies were literally piled up from the top to the bottom of the stairs," he said. He also said a rear exit was not open.
The club was in a black entertainment district south of downtown Chicago, across the street from the Chicago Defender newspaper. The club was packed with party-goers staying out before dawn on the President's Day holiday.
Mr Derrick Mosley, a community activist who lives in the area, said some in the area had been concerned about some violent incidents that had occurred in or near the club and that the venue was often heavily crowded.
Police said investigators were reviewing high-tech film from cameras at the club in an effort to uncover what happened, but had no firm word on exactly what caused the stampede.
There were no reports yesterday of any Irish people among the casualties.
"It is impossible with such a major tragedy to be 100 per cent sure but at the moment according to reports from the Chicago Police Department there are no Irish casualties," a spokesman for the Department of Foreign Affairs said.