REPORTS TO POLICE MADE PRIOR TO TRAGEDY

[Anchor Lead]

We now turn to the tragic Itaewon news. The deadly crowd surge has left 156 people dead so far as the seriously injured cases died. It was also found that several calls were made to the police to report overcrowding and potential crush four hours previous to the accident. The transcripts of those eleven calls show two keywords 'crush' and 'request for crowd control.

[Pkg]

The first call came in at 6:34 p.m. on the day of the horrific stampede. The caller says that it's really scary the way people are coming up and down the alley at the same time, and that they are going to get crushed by the piling people. The responding officer then asks back if it feels like a big accident is going to happen. The call came from that very alley where the tragedy occurred. People had already specifically mentioned the possibility of crowd crush and asked for help from the police as early as four hours prior to the disaster. But the situation wasn't controlled and another emergency call came past eight pm. At 8:33 p.m. the caller reported that people fell down and promised to send a video the caller recorded himself. Another call came 20 minutes later. "People are almost getting crushed." "This is total chaos." Callers grow more frantic. Calls made after nine p.m. became more desperate. "A catastrophe is going to happen soon." "People are really going to die." Those calls were signs that a disaster was imminent. One citizen even provided a detailed solution to the pandemonium, suggesting that the police should control the crowd by making the alley a one-way street. Another call came just before the accident. When the officer asked for the store name, the caller said not a store, but the entire street was jam-packed. Then the officer again asked if the entire street is overcrowded. Out of eleven separate calls, the word "crush" was used nine times... and the word "control" nine times. Callers were desperately asking for police intervention. When firefighters finally reached the scene at 10:17 p.m., numerous people have already suffered cardiac arrest. It was nearly four hours after the first caller had shouted, "Nobody is controlling the crowd, the police should control them!"