Georgia college student among 153 killed in South Korea crowd crush, officials say

A campus community is mourning a Georgia college student killed in a crowd crush during Halloween celebrations in Seoul, South Korea.

Steven Blesi, an international business major at Kennesaw State University, was among the more than 150 people who died in the weekend incident, university officials confirmed Sunday, Oct. 30. He was 20 years old.

Blesi was on a study abroad trip with 10 other students, who the university reported safe after Saturday’s deadly crowd surge in the Itaewon area of Seoul.

“On behalf of the entire Kennesaw State community, our thoughts and prayers go out to Steven’s family and friends as they mourn this incomprehensible loss,” KSU President Kathy Schwaig said in a statement. “We have been in contact with Steven’s family and have offered all available resources of the University to them.”

Blesi’s father, Steve Blesi, wrote on Twitter that his son was “in the area of stampede” and turned to the public for help after he couldn’t reach him. Amid an outpouring of responses, he described calling his son’s phone repeatedly until a police officer answered and confirmed his son’s death.

“We have to be strong for our other son who i will pick up at college today,” Steve Blesi tweeted. “Somehow we have to press on, but our lives have forever changed.”

Anne Gieske, another American student studying nursing at the University of Kentucky, was also killed in the crush of people, the university said. She was living overseas for the semester as part of a study abroad program.

“There aren’t adequate or appropriate words to describe the pain of a beautiful life cut short,” University of Kentucky President Eli Capilouto said in a statement. “It isn’t fair, nor is it comprehensible. It is loss and it hurts in ways that are impossible to articulate.”

What’s a crowd crush?

South Korean officials are investigating what caused a crowd “tens of thousands” of Halloween partygoers to grow out of control, triggering the deadly crowd crush.

A crowd crush, or crowd surge, can happen when “people are packed in a confined space and keep pushing, causing the crowd to fall in a ‘domino effect,’“ Aljazeera reported. This makes it hard for people to get back up, and the lack of space can cause breathing difficulty or suffocation.

“People kept pushing down into a downhill club alley, resulting in other people screaming and falling down like dominos,” a witness told the Yonhap News Agency in South Korea.

Ten people were killed in a similar incident last year during the Astroworld music festival in Houston, Texas.

Officials said they’re in the process of interviewing bystanders to figure out what happened.

“We are analyzing CCTVs to find out the exact cause of the accident,” police chief investigator Nam Gu-jun said, according to Reuters. “We will continue questioning more witnesses, including nearby shop employees.”

Kennesaw is about 30 miles northwest of downtown Atlanta.

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