Italian media reported that a 16-year-old boy had been identified as the sprayer of an irritating substance that triggered the mad rush by the crowd to flee.
ROME — Italian police investigating a deadly disco stampede said Sunday they found a pepper spray can and were questioning dozens of witnesses Sunday following accounts by concertgoers that a teenage boy had sprayed an irritating substance, triggering the mad rush by the crowd to flee.
It wasn’t known if the can found was the one whose spray apparently set off the stampede about 1 a.m. Saturday in a crowd awaiting a rapper’s performance in the Lanterna Azzurra (Blue Lantern) disco in Corinaldo, a small town in the Marche region of east-central Italy, the Carabiniere paramilitary police commander of Ancona province, Col. Cristian Carrozza, told reporters.
He also declined to confirm Italian media reports that a 16-year-old boy had been identified as the sprayer and would be questioned by juvenile court officials.
Five teens, all juveniles, and a woman who had accompanied her 11-year-old daughter to the concert, died in the crush of fleeing concertgoers who toppled over a railing atop a cement ramp outside an exit.
