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player ready...Security guards blocked the exit of a South Side nightclub early Monday in a failed attempt to control a crowd panicked by pepper spray, witnesses said, creating a crushing, smothering pile-up near the door that killed 21 people.
The deadliest disaster in Chicago in more than two decades unfolded at the packed E2 club on South Michigan Avenue when two women began fighting at about 2 a.m., and security guards sought to break up the scuffle with pepper spray.
The burning mist prompted a stampede toward the club’s steep and narrow staircase, and witnesses said other security guards then blocked the door to the street, a claim police officials said they were investigating but could not confirm Monday.
“They blocked the door for three or four minutes. We tried to turn around, but we couldn’t. We couldn’t move at all,” said Kristy Mitchell, 22, of Gary. “I was underneath 15 people. No one could help us. I told the other ladies, `Stop screaming, you’re wasting our air.’
“It was like the Titanic in a nightclub,” she said.
City attorneys said the club over the Epitome restaurant, at 2347 S. Michigan Ave., was operating illegally. They supplied copies of a court order issued last July that barred the use of the building’s second floor. The city planned to seek criminal contempt of court charges on Tuesday, said Deputy Corporation Counsel Dorothy Capers.
But an attorney for the owners of the club said late Monday that city attorneys had signed off on using the second-floor space in October. The attorney pointed out that police had visited the nightclub many times since then on unrelated calls.
Survivors and others described victims, including the more than 50 injured, being trampled as hundreds of patrons trapped on the club’s second floor struggled to get out. Victims, with crushed faces and broken legs, pleaded for water, air and ice.
Rev. Eric Sloss Sr., a South Side pastor, helped identify the dead. “These bodies were smashed … faces, torsos, legs,” Sloss said. “It’s like a steamroller rolled over them.”
Carlisa Howard, 26, said she could hear the victims pounding on the door to get out as she stood on the sidewalk outside the club.
Fearing just such a stampede, Howard had raced for the door and made it out after the spraying began. Once on the street, she turned around and saw a security guard block and apparently bolt the door, she said.
Twenty-one people were confirmed dead Monday afternoon at eight hospitals and the Cook County medical examiner’s office. It was the largest loss of life in a single incident in Chicago since the 1979 crash of Flight 191, which killed 273 people.
On Monday, authorities said 19 people were in cardiac arrest when emergency workers arrived at the club. Many of them were revived, but four were declared dead at the scene.
Hospitals treated victims ranging from the critically injured to those suffering from asthmalike symptoms.
West Side resident Kevin Gayden, 24, was among the dead taken to University of Illinois at Chicago Medical Center. “They just trampled and stepped on him like he was a rug,” said Sheree Mosley, Gayden’s sister. Gayden was the father of two children, ages 2 and 5.
Some family members went to the South Side headquarters of Rainbow/PUSH, where Reverends Jesse Jackson and James Meeks led a noon prayer service.
Jackson suggested the club’s owners deserved sympathy as well. “The owners are victims. And, of course, the dead are victims,” Jackson said.
But Dorothy Myers, mother of 22-year-old victim Antonio Myers, walked down an aisle at the service, crying and shouting out: “We need answers. What’s going on? Our kid’s gone. Oh Jesus, give us some answers.”
As Myers swooned into a front-row chair, her sister, Susan Myers, cried out: “They killed these kids, and we demand to know why.”
In a statement, Mayor Richard Daley called the incident “a terrible tragedy that never should have occurred. It will be fully investigated, and we will take whatever steps are necessary to make sure that nothing like this ever happens again.”
Police–who on Monday said they were probing the incident as a death investigation, not as a homicide investigation–planned to review video from two cameras trained on the club’s second-story dance floor.
City officials could not explain Monday how hundreds of people were partying in a facility the city believed had been shuttered by a judge because of fire code violations.
“The owner knows damn well that he is not to open that second facility,” said Fire Commissioner James Joyce.
But late Monday, an attorney for E2’s operator, Le Mirage All Night Studio Inc., contended that a court order only applied to a VIP lounge on an upper level of the club’s second floor. The court order allowed them to operate the dance floor where the stampede began, said the attorney, Andre Grant.
“As the city is well aware, E2 has been operating at full capacity and in the open pursuant to an agreement reached with the city’s lawyers,” Grant said.
“No, that’s not true,” responded Jennifer Hoyle, a spokeswoman for the city’s Law Department. “The court order specifically says that the second floor has to be kept vacant.”
“I’m not aware of any other agreement,” other than the court order, Hoyle said.
Sunday night’s party was handled by a promoter, Envy Entertainment, Grant said, adding that Envy was responsible for hiring 18 security guards for the event. Le Mirage had 10 of its own security guards present, but none had pepper spray, according to Grant.
He said the panic was worsened because some patrons apparently thought the spray was deadly and shouted, “Poisonous gas!” or “Terrorist attack!”
Police and city officials had sought to close Epitome down last year because the club allegedly had become a magnet for violence outside its doors.
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But African-American community activists rallied to the club owners’ defense, arguing that they should be given a chance to address the problems because it was an important black-owned business in the city.
Numerous survivors said underage patrons are often the source of fights at the club. Oftentimes, they said, underage people come in as part of the entourage of VIP club guests and aren’t searched for weapons.
Michelle Hurst, 20, said she and her 19-year-old friend, Charita Rhodes, decided to go to the club Sunday because they were told it was a Ladies Night special. Women 18 and up would get in free, Hurst said.
It was their belief that as underage club-goers, they would have to wear special bracelets to prevent bartenders from serving them alcohol.
But Hurst, whose friend died in the rush to the door, said even though they showed their underage IDs at the door, they were able to buy alcohol without any of the bartenders checking their age.
Police Supt. Terry Hillard said his department had responded to roughly 80 incidents in and around the club since 2000.
Management had requested more Chicago police support to control crowds at Epitome, but Hillard said police do not provide security for private clubs in the city.
The club has a long history of trouble. In 1996, a 25-year-old Gary woman accused boxer Mike Tyson of sexually assaulting her at the club, which previously was known as The Clique, among other names.
In another incident a year ago, a Chicago police officer shot and critically wounded a man who allegedly pointed a gun at him after fleeing a shooting near the club.
But the club, known as a hangout for such top rap and R&B musicians as 50 Cent and R. Kelly, had its defenders as well.
Last spring, Bamani Obadele joined several other neighborhood activists in a campaign to keep Epitome open after city officials sought to take its license.
Obadele said there had been a string of shootings in front of the club over the last couple of years and the city wanted to shut it down.
The violence had occurred outside of the restaurant and nightclub, and the activist said it should not be penalized for outside behavior. Obadele said the owner promised to increase security.
“If they had closed this place down last year, would 21 people still be alive?” Obadele said. “That’s what I’m dealing with now.”
Among the politicians who have used E2 for fundraisers is Ald. Madeline Haithcock (2nd), whose ward includes the club. Standing outside the two-story white building on Monday, she described it as “a very nice nightclub. I can’t tell you anything that was wrong with it.”
A doctor’s perspective
One of the first doctors on the scene Monday morning was Dr. Christopher Beach. The Northwestern Memorial Hospital emergency room doctor was heading home to Glenview when his pager went off about 3:30 a.m.
When Beach arrived, a paramedic commander took him upstairs to the gruesome scene. “It was horrible. There was glass, and chairs overturned. There were a bunch of people lying on beds [gurneys] and chairs,” Beach said.
Taken to three bodies with white sheets spread over them, Beach lifted the sheets and checked for a pulse.
There was none.
“They were all young and contorted,” he said. “They looked like they had just been squeezed in a vise.”
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Police are asking anyone who witnessed what happened at the club to call 312-746-8252.