A girl dramatically reacting to an insect may have caused the stampede that unfolded at an Atlanta metro station as crowds were leaving Beyoncé’s concert.
Nine people were injured on an escalator at the Vine City Station just after midnight as it was packed with BeyHive fans leaving the Cowboy Carter concert at Mercedes-Benz stadium in downtown Atlanta early Tuesday morning, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority said.
One suffered a broken ankle and seven others were transported to a hospital with cuts and scrapes. One person declined hospital transport, officials said.
MARTA police at the scene said they heard a scream and a witnesses reported “the person who screamed was reacting to an insect,” Stephany Fisher, MARTA’s Senior Director of Communications, said Friday.
“I believe there’s also video on TikTok of a woman claiming it was a 10-year-old relative who screamed when she saw a bug,” Fisher said. “Video from the rail station clearly shows people reacting and running, but you can’t see who screamed or what they were reacting to.”
MARTA police chief Scott Kreher also said the chaos was caused by a girl who saw a cockroach or a “palmetto bug,” NBC affiliate WXIA of Atlanta reported.
In the ordeal people began screaming and a stampede unfolded on the escalator, causing it to temporarily speed up then suddenly stop.
“There was someone who started to scream outside of the station. She was startled by a bug outside, outside the large crowd,” acting CEO Rhonda Allen told the MARTA board on Thursday, WXIA reported.
Allen explained that the escalator had passed an inspection days earlier, but the weight and movement of a crowd of people suddenly fleeing caused it to speed up then suddenly stop.
“Imagine a group of people saying, ‘I want to get down I want to get down,’ began to usher themselves down the escalator,” Allen continued.
She said the transit authority in the future will add staff to manage the flow of passengers onto escalators.
