After a late-night party in Chicago erupted into a stampede, 21 partygoers were dead and at least 55 lay injured in hospitals. Now, everyone wants to figure out who is to blame for this needless chaos that led to these unnecessary deaths and injuries.
According to an article in the Chicago Sun Times, the stampede was caused when a fight broke out between a few people, and security personnel sprayed Mace to contain the fight. The result was just the opposite. As many as 1,500 people were crammed into the second floor and panic swept the crowd, who all tried to cram out of one exit; another exit was blocked by laundry.
Last July a judge ordered that the club, E2, close until it fixed 11 building code violations. The club owners, Calvin Hollins and Dwain J. Kyles, ignored the judge and when the downstairs restaurant, Epitome, was surveyed by inspectors recently, E2 was overlooked. A lawyer of the owners said that they were under the assumption that only the balcony on the second floor was not to be used because of the violations.
Who do these guys think they’re fooling? Now that so many people are dead – because the owners chose to take a fatal risk – they are doing and saying anything they can not to take responsibility for their bad decisions. The owners are even saying that it was not their security personnel who sprayed the pepper-spray. They place the blame on the promoters’ security, who had provided an additional 18 people the night the fatalities occurred. How do they know who sprayed the Mace? Who’s going to fess up and tell the truth about what really went on in E2?
If it’s your club, it’s your problem. The owners should take responsibility for the lives they have ruined, and apologize to the families of the dead for lives that are lost forever. The families of those 21 victims are mourning, and these club owners are trying to pass the buck to anyone they can involve to make it look like they weren’t in the wrong.
Fire Commissioner James Joyce said that the owner knew “damn well that he [was] not to open that second-floor facility.” Therefore, is this horrendous move to open the second floor a move of utter defiance or simple greed?
Now that they have committed such a selfish act to save their own asses, they must do the right thing and take responsibility. Hollins and Kyles should be criminally prosecuted for their recklessness endangerment of innocent lives, and repay the city of Chicago with time from their own lives in a lonely prison cell.
The city of Chicago plans to file criminal contempt charges against Hollins and Kyles, and they could be charged with criminally negligent homicide. In the owners’ defense, the South Side area of town did not have many places willing to host parties for young African-Americans. They wanted to provide a place for people to mix and mingle. Therefore, their intentions were good. But the road to hell is paved with good intentions.
The next time you go to a club, do not think about all the fun you may have. Put safety first because the people who provide that good time may not think twice about precautions to prevent a disaster such as this, which has ended in such tragedy.
