Several years ago, 2014 to be exact, a Steve Aoki-headlined Thriller Music Park event in Madrid saw five people tragically killed in a Halloween party which saw promoter Miguel Ángel Flores and several other men charged with gross negligence, manslaughter, and 29 counts of criminal injury.
The five girls who died reportedly suffered from injuries sustained in a crowd crush, which, as Spin reported at the time, “was the result of a stampede caused by the sudden lighting of a flare.” It took the emergency services three hours to clear the venue.
While only seven defendants out of a total fourteen charged were convicted, Miguel is the only one to be charged with the maximum sentence possible.
A Madrid court ruled that Miguel had intentionally oversold the event by 6,000 tickets and did not implement the correct security measures to deal with such a massive influx of people. Such gross security measure negligence eventually contributed to overcrowding which caused the five victims to suffer fatal injuries during a stampede triggered by a sudden lighting of a flare.
Featured Image Source: La Van Guardia | H/T Resident Advisor