After being forced through a small Finsbury Park entrance by police, Wireless Festival crowds were “forced to climb over fences to avoid being trampled,” but new video from the event shows fencing being torn down as masses stampede into the venue.
A video posted on social media shows a crowd outside the festival pushing back against police, who appear to be attempting to control the crowd’s movement.
Another video showed people tearing down fences as they stampeded into the area and jumped over existing park fences while others screamed.
Nicki Minaj performed at the event on Sunday night after SZA and Cardi B gave performances on Saturday and Friday, respectively.
Elia Morrow, a festival-goer, wrote on Twitter that the Met Police “should have been more prepared for crowds” on the final day of a significant festival.
“Having no controlled flow of pedestrian traffic, with only the smallest opening at the single entrance to Finsbury Park.
“People are being crushed underfoot and made to climb high gates.
Police stated that event organizers and security should handle any crowd issues.
Elia Morrow continued, saying that while some in the crowd were “crying and having panic attacks,” others were fighting to “climb over fences away from the shoving.”
According to a Met Police spokesperson, a small number of people attempted to enter the site while others were in line, and entry was ‘briefly’ stopped.
They claimed that during this break, a crowd grew and police officers helped with event security.
People can be seen pushing against massive metal doors as event security attempts to close them in a video uploaded by Scarcity News on Twitter and viewed more than 48,000 times.
Some individuals squeezed through spaces between the security officers’ legs and ran into the festival area.
The camera then switches to show throngs of people pouring into the event, some of whom are seen scaling a white-covered harris fence.
People then jump over a fixed wooden barrier and step over the second fence, which is now flat, to obtain admission after the temporary fencing has been destroyed.
As the fence climbers are being pushed back over the fence and out of the festival grounds, police officers can be seen running toward them.
A festival-goer who wished to remain unnamed described it as the “scariest event of my life.”
She admitted to MailOnline, “I’ve never been terrified for my life before in a crowd.
The event was a complete mess with no crowd control or even general control.
“I don’t know how it even got that terrible, but the people traffic was so awful that I was forced against a policeman who had been pushed away from the human wall they constructed that failed,” the man said.
“There was yelling. I watched two individuals get sick and four people in my area of the crowd faint.
“It went on for kilometers, although I can’t speak for the rest of the audience. It was the most terrifying event I’ve ever had.