GERMANY: Memorial service held to mark one year since twenty-one people were killed in stampede during Love Parade

Record ID: 451536

  • Title: GERMANY: Memorial service held to mark one year since twenty-one people were killed in stampede during Love Parade
  • Date: 25th July 2011
  • Summary: DUISBURG, GERMANY (JULY 24, 2011) (REUTERS) STADIUM MSV
  • Embargoed: 9th August 2011 13:00
  • Keywords:
  • Location: Germany, Germany
  • Country: Germany
  • Topics: Accidents
  • Reuters ID: LVA1AI3JI1KGOR5DP4Q1XJITUZDG
  • Story Text: About 7,000 people commemorated those killed in a stampede during a Love Parade a year ago.
    The names of all 21 victims were read out loud at a memorial service on Sunday (July 24) at a stadium in Duisburg. During heavy rain paramedics placed 21sunflowers in shape of a heart as a symbolic act .
    Besides ambulance people and politicians, relatives of the victims also said some words. The mother of one of the girls who died in the catastrophe told the mourners how sad every day is without her daughter.
    A representative of the emergency counselling in Rhineland, Joachim Mueller-Lange, said that the service was a platform for the relatives to share their grief.
    "The pain will come up again, yes, and tears might flow again, but on the other side this public commemoration everyone will see that society has not forgotten."
    Twenty-one people, aged 20 to 40, were killed and more than 500 injured on July 24, 2010 when hordes of young people pushed through a tunnel into the techno festival area at a former freight rail yard in Duisburg, a poor western German city of 500,000.
    Eight foreigners -- from Australia, Bosnia, China, Italy, the Netherlands and Spain -- were among those killed.
    Police have said local officials ignored warnings that Duisburg would be too small to host one million people at the Love Parade, while the organisers blamed police for letting too many into the railyard.
    Immediately after the accident it was the mayor of Duisburg, Adolf Sauerland and the boss of the Love Parade, Rainer Schaller at whom the fingers of guilt were pointed.
    Sauerland, a leader in Chancellor Angela Merkel's Christian Democrats, has been assailed for ignoring warnings from city planning agencies, police and fire officials.
    Now the state prosecutor in Duisburg, Rolf Haferkamp, says investigators are looking at possible charges of negligent homicide against 16 people, eleven from the town authorities, four from the organisers of the festival and one member of the police. More than 3,000 witnesses have been questioned to find out why an event set up for 250,000 people ended up with between 500,000 and 1 million.
    The Love Parade originated in Berlin, with a population of 3.4 million, and was held in a giant park in Germany's largest city until 2006.
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