Beyoncé concert-goers recently had a terrifying end to their evening on the final night of the singer’s Cowboy Carter tour Atlanta shows via PEOPLE.
In the early morning hours of Tuesday, July 15th, crowds of people leaving the Mercedes-Benz Stadium took the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA) to get home. But at the Vine City station, an incident caused mass injuries.
“Just after midnight on Tuesday, July 15, 11 people leaving the Beyoncé concert at Mercedes-Benz Stadium in downtown Atlanta were injured on an escalator at Vine City Station,” Stephany Fisher, sr. director of communications for MARTA, tells PEOPLE.
“One person suffered a broken ankle, seven people were transported to the hospital with cuts and scrapes, and one person declined transport. Two people requested medical assistance after reaching their destinations.”
As per Fisher, MARTA Police who were on the scene reported that “a person began screaming and running, causing a stampede on the escalator that caused it to temporarily speed up and then stop suddenly.”
Fisher added that the escalator has since been barricaded. Both MARTA and the escalator’s manufacturer, Schindler, are investigating the situation.
MARTA police chief Scott Kreher told 11Alive that the person who reportedly started the stampede was actually a 10-year-old girl who observed a cockroach or “Palmetto bug.”
“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 July 17, 11Alive reported.
When asked about this claim, Fisher tells PEOPLE, “MARTA Police on scene said there was a scream, and witnesses said the person who screamed was reacting to an insect. 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.”
Video footage noted from the alarming event depicted the escalator lurching forward, causing people to topple over one another as the crowd screamed. People were then seen being helped off the ground by fellow concert-goers.
“It just created a whole entire slide full of people,” student Jacobi Edwards told Fox 5. “It just started tumbling — people just tumbling on each other. It was crazy, it was chaotic.”
