NEW JERSEY (PIX11) -- Seaside Heights Mayor Anthony Vaz said he is meeting with his business administrator and police chief Tuesday evening to debrief about Saturday’s near-stampede on the boardwalk.
Around 8 p.m., Vaz said police received initial calls for shots fired, which prompted people to panic and run. Vaz said it quickly became apparent that there was no shooting.
“There’s no evidence that there was a shot fired,” said Vaz. “There’s no shells. They [police] combed the area. They interviewed people.”
It’s unclear what type of sound caused the mass panic. Some witnesses reported hearing a car backfire, while others said it was fireworks or balloons.
Chris D’Amico works at a clothing store along the boardwalk and said people ran into his store, cowering behind clothing racks and the cash register. He said things began with a large group of several hundred people congregating nearby.
“There were a lot of people just congregating over here,” said D’Amico. “Getting a little out of hand. Probably a couple hundred people. Next thing I know, there’s a big loud boom - like a deep boom. And everybody starts running down the boardwalk like a stampede, throwing things around. It was pretty chaotic over here.”
Mo Ali was working a carnival game on the boardwalk Saturday night and said some people took cover in his booth.
“People just started running like crazy, hysterically for no reason,” said Ali. “And some people jumped in here. They were lying here. They thought at first there was a shooter, and even one of the police asked me if I heard gunshots and stuff.”
Vaz said police appropriately responded to the calls.
“You could have a thousand police officers,” said Vaz. “When you have 20,000 or 30,000 visitors - be in children, young adults, adults - it’s hard to maintain, especially on an open boardwalk.”
Also, over the weekend in Wildwood, city officials declared a state of emergency and closed its boardwalk, citing ‘numerous incidents of civil unrest.’
According to a statement from Wildwood officials, police began to respond to an ‘irrepressible number of calls for service on Saturday evening. Most of the calls were related to the ‘extremely large number of young adults and juveniles’ in the city for the holiday weekend. Officials requested mutual aid at the peak of the civil unrest and said that, due to the high call volume, police could not respond to certain calls during that time period.
In Ocean City, police responded to a teen who was stabbed on the boardwalk. Mayor Jay Gillian said police made multiple arrests and quickly restored order.
In a statement, Gillian wrote:
“Ocean City will always be welcoming to all guests, but I want to send a clear message to parents and to teens: ‘If you don’t want to behave, don’t come.’”
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