Mother of Seoul Crowd Surge Victim Describes Daughter’s Experience

• A mother is searching for her daughter who was caught in the crowd surge in South Korea.
• Her 19-year-old daughter was celebrating Halloween in a Seoul nightlife hub when she got crushed in the crowd.
• The mother told Yonhap News Agency that her daughter’s boyfriend told her she died. 

The mother of a Seoul crowd surge victim describes the harrowing details of her daughter’s experience getting crushed while partying over the weekend. 

The woman, identified as Ahn, told Yonhap News Agency that her 19-year-old daughter went to participate in the Halloween festivities with her boyfriend at Itaewon nightlife district. 

Ahn said her daughter’s boyfriend called her around midnight to inform her that her daughter had died in the crowd stampede that left at least 151 people dead on Saturday.  Officials said that 82 others were wounded, with more than a dozen in serious condition.

Videos and photos show medics scrambling to help people at the scene, which witnesses described to the BBC as “completely out of control.” Approximately 100,000 people were in the area, marking the first large gathering with no masks since the COVID-19 pandemic, according to the BBC.

According to Ahn, the boyfriend said that her daughter had “been under a pile of people for over an hour and that he’d tried to pull her out but couldn’t,” per the report. 

After receiving the news, Ahn went to Soonchunhyang University Hospital — where many of the surge victims were transported— to search for her daughter and get confirmation on her death, according to Yonhap News Agency. 

CNN reported on Sunday that local police said a majority of the victims have been identified and the number of fatalities has risen to 153.