An insect may have caused a stampede at an Atlanta metro station as concert-goers left a Beyoncé concert, transit officials say.
The “Single Ladies” singer is on a world tour to promote her country album “Cowboy Carter.” After a show in Atlanta, fans packed the Vine City Station early Tuesday on their way home from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium downtown.
Chaos ensued as an overcrowded escalator started to speed up and then abruptly stop, throwing people to the ground, according to NBC News affiliate WXIA.
Transit officials now say the commotion and the injuries of nine people that followed were caused by a girl screaming about a bug.
Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority police who were there during the stampede said they heard a scream, and witnesses reported “the person who screamed was reacting to an insect,” Stephany Fisher, MARTA’s senior director of communications, said Friday, per NBC News.
“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.
He added: “Video from the rail station clearly shows people reacting and running, but you can’t see who screamed or what they were reacting to.”
One person caught in the chaos on the escalator suffered a broken ankle, and seven others were hospitalized with cuts and scrapes, the outlet reported. Officials say the ninth person declined to go to the hospital.
In a video of the stampede, concert-goers can be seen sliding down an escalator. People can be heard screaming, and the person recording the video was asking if everyone was okay.
Several people were seen on the floor of the station, and the person filming said, “I’m shocked only two people end up on the ground.”
Scott Kreher, police chief of the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority, shared a similar story to Fisher. He said, per WXIA, the commotion was sparked by a girl who unexpectedly saw a cockroach or “palmetto bug.”
“There was someone who started to scream outside of the station. She was startled by a bug outside the large crowd,” acting CEO Rhonda Allen told the MARTA board Thursday, the local outlet reported.
Allen continued: “Imagine a group of people saying, ‘I want to get down I want to get down,’ began to usher themselves down the escalator.”
The official explained how the weight and abrupt movement from the stampede caused the escalator to malfunction. She said the escalator passed an inspection days before the incident.
Allen said MARTA will have a “more aggressive approach” when staffing these types of events and better manage the flow of people onto escalators.
