After a year of canceled events, crowds were excited to attend the Louisiana Crawfish Festival in St. Bernard Parish over the weekend. What began as a fun event, however, quickly turned chaotic when an unproven declaration of a shooting turned the crowd into a stampede, according to WDSU.
St. Bernard Parish Sheriff James Pohlmann said they don't know what started the incident, but witnesses claim to have heard people shouting "gun." Rachel Bennett, who attends the festival each year, recalled the event to WWL.
"The crowd was enormous, bigger than we've ever seen," she said. "Someone screamed and we turned around and saw just a flood of people running towards us. Someone said gun and someone said shots and people started saying they heard two shots, we never heard those two shots."
KLFY published video from the festival of when the stampede began, which can be seen below.
"When the crowd kind of ran off and everything, we locked it down,' said Cisco Gonzales, festival organizer. "We looked for a gun, if someone had a gun, we searched people, but to clear the air there was no shooting, no gun found on premises."
Several people were injured during the stampede, including two children ages 9 and 11 who were taken to a hospital for treatment, WDSU reports. They have since been released.
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