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Body Bags: Chaos at Astroworld · Crime Stories with Nancy Grace

0:08
Speaker 1: Body Backs with Joseph Scott Morgan. Imagine going out with
0:23
Speaker 1: friends and family. You've waited all this time, You've gone online,
0:28
Speaker 1: you've bought tickets, You've got passes, and the one thing
0:32
Speaker 1: that you want to hear or the songs of your
0:34
Speaker 1: favorite performer. It all turned a tragedy at astral World
0:41
Speaker 1: as a concert put on by Travis Scott. Day, we're
0:45
Speaker 1: gonna talk about the deaths of ten people. I'm Joseph
0:49
Speaker 1: Scott Morgan and this is Body Backs Back with me
0:58
Speaker 1: today is my good friend Jackie Howard, executive producer of
1:02
Speaker 1: Crime Stories. Would Nancy Grace, Jackie, what can you tell
1:06
Speaker 1: us about this tragedy? Ten people died in a stampede
1:10
Speaker 1: at the astral World festival in Houston during rapper Travis
1:14
Speaker 1: Scott's concert. And now we do have a ruling by
1:17
Speaker 1: the Harris County Medical Examiner on those deaths. Those victims
1:22
Speaker 1: were aged nine to twenty seven years old, and they
1:25
Speaker 1: died of compression asphyxia, according to the examiner's report. Another
1:32
Speaker 1: three hundred people were injured. Now, the audience was over
1:35
Speaker 1: fifty thousand people and from what we know, a large
1:38
Speaker 1: majority of those patrons started to storm the stage which
1:42
Speaker 1: led to these deaths. I have so many questions, but
1:46
Speaker 1: let's start with the fact, Joe, that this is not
1:49
Speaker 1: the first time that something like this has happened, right
1:53
Speaker 1: you are, Jackie, It's not the first time. In the
1:56
Speaker 1: human nature, it seems like we never learned from tragedies.
1:59
Speaker 1: It's it's almost like history repeats itself. And you know,
2:02
Speaker 1: when when I first heard about these deaths and well
2:06
Speaker 1: the injuries, you know, because at first we didn't know
2:08
Speaker 1: how many people had died. We didn't know if anybody
2:11
Speaker 1: had died, but we knew that folks had been injured.
2:13
Speaker 1: It was it was total anarchy out there. And immediately
2:17
Speaker 1: I began to reflect back to my youth, and you
2:21
Speaker 1: know what happened up in Cincinnati at the infamous Who concert,
2:26
Speaker 1: where you know, you had many people up there that
2:30
Speaker 1: were injured there, and as well, you had folks that
2:33
Speaker 1: were crushed to death. I think that there were eleven
2:36
Speaker 1: deaths at that concert. There were, and I still remember,
2:40
Speaker 1: you know, reflecting back over the years, how impactful that
2:45
Speaker 1: moment was. And there were a lot of questions that
2:47
Speaker 1: were asked, Uh, you know, why wasn't somebody you know,
2:51
Speaker 1: kind of guarding the gate, if you will, and that's
2:53
Speaker 1: not necessarily I don't mean that in a sense of
2:55
Speaker 1: a guard. I mean people managing the flow of people
3:01
Speaker 1: coming in and out. Because the one thing that we
3:03
Speaker 1: know about human nature, Jackie, is that when people get
3:06
Speaker 1: super excited, adrenaline kicks in and people get to press forward.
3:11
Speaker 1: And if you've ever been to a parade or something
3:14
Speaker 1: like that, or maybe you've been at concert for those
3:17
Speaker 1: of you that are listening, and you're super excited about
3:20
Speaker 1: going to this thing, and then all of a sudden,
3:22
Speaker 1: you feel yourself being kind of caught up and you
3:25
Speaker 1: don't have any control over what's going on in the
3:29
Speaker 1: space around you. And the WHO concert made me think
3:32
Speaker 1: also about what's referred to as the infamous Hillsborough disaster,
3:36
Speaker 1: which happened over in the UK many years ago at
3:39
Speaker 1: a football match, a soccer match where you had ninety
3:43
Speaker 1: seven just imagine this, jack You had ninety seven people
3:47
Speaker 1: that were asphyxiated. They were crushed to death as a
3:52
Speaker 1: result of people pushing forward, and they were in what
3:55
Speaker 1: we're referred to as pins and they you know, they
3:58
Speaker 1: kind of had the the area kind of cordroned off
4:02
Speaker 1: where people couldn't They couldn't break free, there was no
4:04
Speaker 1: point of escape, and so you have this massive humanity,
4:09
Speaker 1: like a crushing wave of people that are impacting these
4:14
Speaker 1: individuals that are in this arrested area where they can
4:17
Speaker 1: go no further. How horrible would that be just the
4:21
Speaker 1: thought of that not to be able to break free,
4:23
Speaker 1: you don't have anywhere to go. It causes some people
4:25
Speaker 1: to in this case, to jump over railings and people
4:28
Speaker 1: were injured that way, and then if you're at the
4:31
Speaker 1: bottom of the pile, you have no way. It's an
4:34
Speaker 1: unsurvivable event. And what Hillsborough has in connection would say,
4:41
Speaker 1: for instance, what happened at Asher World is that these
4:45
Speaker 1: were general admission tickets. So it's it's kind of like,
4:48
Speaker 1: you know, you begin to think, you know, first come,
4:51
Speaker 1: first served, you want to press in. There's no assign
4:54
Speaker 1: seating that sort of thing. So at just from Jump Street,
4:57
Speaker 1: you've got you've got chaos. And you remember what I
5:01
Speaker 1: said about excitement when I covered this case not too
5:06
Speaker 1: many years ago as well, But there was this tragedy
5:10
Speaker 1: that had actually occurred up in Rhode Island and it
5:12
Speaker 1: was the Station nightclub fire. And in that case that
5:16
Speaker 1: was here in the US we had one hundred dead.
5:19
Speaker 1: And you think, well, Morgan, you're talking about a fire. Yeah,
5:22
Speaker 1: I'm talking about a fire. But what happens when people
5:24
Speaker 1: scream fire? Remember the old adage about that it's illegal
5:28
Speaker 1: to scream fire in a movie theater. And one of
5:32
Speaker 1: the rationales behind this is that you get this kind
5:36
Speaker 1: of herd mentality where people are panicking and they're running
5:39
Speaker 1: and you're trampling people. That's why they tell you to
5:41
Speaker 1: be ordered. You know, when we're kids, we go through
5:43
Speaker 1: fire drills at school. You're ordered in getting out. If not,
5:47
Speaker 1: the weakest in the crowd are gonna be left behind
5:50
Speaker 1: and crushed. So and you know, in the case in
5:52
Speaker 1: Rhode Island, yeah, there were people that died as a
5:55
Speaker 1: result of, say, for instance, smoke annihilation, But many of
5:58
Speaker 1: these people died as result of being crushed and being
6:02
Speaker 1: trapped and not having a point of escapement in this
6:06
Speaker 1: particular case, and of course it leads to tragedy. Jackie.
6:09
Speaker 1: Let's talk specifics, Joe about what literally happened. You have
6:15
Speaker 1: a throng of people, fifty thousand that we know of.
6:20
Speaker 1: Now I'm not saying all fifty thousand took part in
6:22
Speaker 1: this but we have a lot of people that are
6:24
Speaker 1: wanting to watch and be close to the stage. So
6:28
Speaker 1: what exactly happened? The crowd started pushing forward. And you know,
6:34
Speaker 1: I'm from the South as well. You say, that's like
6:36
Speaker 1: putting fifty pounds of mud in a five pound sack. Yeah, you,
6:39
Speaker 1: And it is. It is all about volume, isn't it.
6:42
Speaker 1: And that's what that old expression goes to, Jackie. There's
6:45
Speaker 1: there's only so much that a particular area can contain
6:50
Speaker 1: without their becoming stressors that are exhibited, you know. And
6:54
Speaker 1: in this case, you mentioned the stage, and the stage
6:56
Speaker 1: is kind of a blocking area, if you will, and
7:00
Speaker 1: there's only one area to kind of escape to, and
7:04
Speaker 1: that gets that becomes progressively more and more narrow as
7:08
Speaker 1: people panic because they're all shooting for that area. And
7:11
Speaker 1: in this case, people started pushing forward toward the stage.
7:15
Speaker 1: And generally, if folks have ever been to a general
7:18
Speaker 1: emission concert, there's a barricade that kind of separates the stage,
7:23
Speaker 1: and you'll have like security people that are in between
7:26
Speaker 1: the stage and the barricade, and the barricade separates the
7:28
Speaker 1: people from the stage, and folks began to press forward.
7:32
Speaker 1: I think that one of the questions that people had
7:35
Speaker 1: is that why was there not more of an awareness
7:38
Speaker 1: on the part of Travis Scott and those individuals that
7:41
Speaker 1: are performing and that are providing the entertainment and folks
7:47
Speaker 1: are you know, they're in a mad rush? And I
7:49
Speaker 1: would assume that maybe if you're up on the stage
7:52
Speaker 1: and you're in a fevered moment and people are getting excited,
7:56
Speaker 1: it's probably kind of hard to interpret it as being
7:59
Speaker 1: in anything other than enthusiasm maybe, And of course, in
8:03
Speaker 1: this particular case, because you've got this crushing event and
8:06
Speaker 1: that's what this winds up being a pressure event, then
8:14
Speaker 1: it's hard to delineate that, particularly from a great distance,
8:18
Speaker 1: you know, where you're elevated above the crowd, you're engaging,
8:22
Speaker 1: you're entertaining, and this sort of thing. So there were
8:26
Speaker 1: a lot of things that kind of fell apart, you know,
8:28
Speaker 1: security fell apart. I think folks that were panicking they
8:31
Speaker 1: were not aware of the individuals that around them. All
8:33
Speaker 1: they could think of was I need to get the safety.
8:36
Speaker 1: And that's that's kind of a promptmal response, isn't it.
8:39
Speaker 1: And so at the end, though you have all of
8:41
Speaker 1: these individuals that are heavily compressed and in a confined area,
8:47
Speaker 1: and this comes down to the density of the crowd.
8:51
Speaker 1: And when people that study these sorts of things relative
8:56
Speaker 1: to movement of humanity, there's actually folks don't believe this,
9:00
Speaker 1: but there are actually areas in academia where people study
9:05
Speaker 1: u population and population at venues like this. They make
9:10
Speaker 1: their entire career off of this, and unfortunately, I think
9:13
Speaker 1: that a lot of the people that study these things
9:15
Speaker 1: in academia that data doesn't necessarily make it down to
9:19
Speaker 1: the individuals that have their let's say, their their their
9:23
Speaker 1: hand on the control leavers here, and that's what wound
9:27
Speaker 1: up happening. It was poorly managed. There wasn't an awareness
9:31
Speaker 1: for those that might be weaker in the crowd, and
9:33
Speaker 1: there certainly wasn't awareness of how much danger existed in
9:36
Speaker 1: this environment. Jackie. I don't know about you, but by
9:58
Speaker 1: nature I'm I'm a photic person. I wouldn't have done
10:01
Speaker 1: too good, you know, in the military on a submarine.
10:05
Speaker 1: And I think about these people in this environment and
10:09
Speaker 1: how panicked they must have been. You know, you begin
10:12
Speaker 1: to feel pressure on you. Maybe there's even this fear
10:17
Speaker 1: that you can't breathe that you can't escape. Can you
10:19
Speaker 1: imagine how horrible that is? I can't imagine how horrible
10:23
Speaker 1: that is, and honestly I don't want to. Because what
10:26
Speaker 1: we know that happened is as the crowd of fifty
10:29
Speaker 1: thousand people started to surge toward the stage, at some
10:32
Speaker 1: point these individuals were caught. They were trapped and himmed
10:37
Speaker 1: in by the barricades set up to protect the performers
10:40
Speaker 1: on the stage. There were barricades on three sides, so
10:43
Speaker 1: these victims were caught and unable, as you were mentioning earlier,
10:48
Speaker 1: to escape, they could not get out. We know that
10:52
Speaker 1: some of the victims fell on the ground and were
10:54
Speaker 1: trampled as the crowd surged forward. So we know, according
10:58
Speaker 1: to the medical examiners or that these individuals were essentially
11:03
Speaker 1: crushed to death in the crowd compression asphyxia. So explain
11:09
Speaker 1: to me what compression asphyxia is specifically, and then we
11:13
Speaker 1: can go from there. Joe, Yeah, Jackie, you know, we
11:16
Speaker 1: hear the term asphyxia all the time in death investigation,
11:19
Speaker 1: and as certainly we've learned over this past year when
11:22
Speaker 1: cases like Gabby Potito in other cases, we know that
11:26
Speaker 1: it has something to do with a lack of oxygen,
11:28
Speaker 1: doesn't it anytime you hear this term asphyxia and in
11:33
Speaker 1: compression asphyxia specifically, it's different than say, things like a
11:38
Speaker 1: choking or literature strangulation of hanging, or even a say,
11:42
Speaker 1: for instance, a smothering, even though there are some elements
11:45
Speaker 1: that are similar. But with compression, we have to think
11:49
Speaker 1: about two areas. First off, the chest, all right, and
11:54
Speaker 1: then we have to think about the neck. So just imagine,
11:58
Speaker 1: if you will, you're in a very kind of tight,
12:02
Speaker 1: constricted space where individuals are pressing on you and are inhibiting, uh,
12:11
Speaker 1: the your ability for your chest to rise and fall.
12:14
Speaker 1: Remember that's one of the things that we look for
12:17
Speaker 1: in depth investigation, well specifically in emergency medicine. One of
12:22
Speaker 1: the questions they'll ask is their chest rising and falling.
12:25
Speaker 1: What that means is are they inhalating and exhalating air? Okay?
12:30
Speaker 1: And so absent that ability to inhalate and exhalate, that
12:34
Speaker 1: means that you're you're not taking in oxygen all right,
12:37
Speaker 1: Your lungs are not taking it in, and of course
12:40
Speaker 1: it has to process it. And then of course that
12:43
Speaker 1: that oxygen rich blood that's that's transported. You know, the
12:47
Speaker 1: oxygen's transported via the hemoglobe, and it keeps us pumping,
12:51
Speaker 1: doesn't It keeps us going. So you have this event
12:54
Speaker 1: where this oxygen supply is cut off. So if you're
12:59
Speaker 1: if you can expand your chest and breathe in air,
13:04
Speaker 1: you're in trouble. Now. The other area where compression asphyxia
13:08
Speaker 1: takes place, and something that has to be considered is
13:11
Speaker 1: a compression of the neck. Again, an area we've talked
13:15
Speaker 1: about where you have a pressure that is being applied
13:20
Speaker 1: to the neck externally, externally and so that it's it's
13:25
Speaker 1: impacting or squeezing down on the corroated vessels. These are
13:29
Speaker 1: the two major vessels that run up the neck and
13:33
Speaker 1: into the brain and supply the brain directly with oxygen.
13:37
Speaker 1: And this is what happens. When the oxygen to the
13:42
Speaker 1: brain is cut off, if you will, or is diminished.
13:47
Speaker 1: This results in what in a condition that's referred to
13:50
Speaker 1: as a noxia. Individuals become an oxic and they cannot
13:55
Speaker 1: they don't have sufficient air supply or oxygen to the
13:59
Speaker 1: brain so that the brain can function. Remember, and I
14:02
Speaker 1: talk about this quite a bit, the brain is essentially
14:08
Speaker 1: the most vascular organ in the body, and what that
14:11
Speaker 1: means is that it requires the greatest amount of blood
14:15
Speaker 1: flow is certainly oxygenated blood, in order to supply it
14:19
Speaker 1: with energy so that it can process everything that goes
14:22
Speaker 1: on in our body, whether it's it's motor movement, you know,
14:25
Speaker 1: where we're moving around, we're blinking our eyes and all
14:27
Speaker 1: that stuff, or in the autonomic sense auto meaning self
14:31
Speaker 1: where it's telling our heart to beat, it's telling us
14:34
Speaker 1: to breathe, all these other functions that we don't have
14:37
Speaker 1: to think about that just kind of happen. That's an
14:39
Speaker 1: autonomic nervous system. So all of that oxygen and that
14:42
Speaker 1: energy that's that's that derives from oxygenated blood is essentially
14:49
Speaker 1: cut off at that moment time, and it can lead
14:51
Speaker 1: to catastrophic outcomes. You'll have individuals that may very well,
14:59
Speaker 1: at a very p i'm a level, still be technically alive,
15:02
Speaker 1: but they go into a comatose state as a result
15:05
Speaker 1: of this oxygen deprivation, if you will. And so in
15:10
Speaker 1: this case, there were several people that were taken to
15:12
Speaker 1: the hospital that never regain consciousness, and that's because they
15:16
Speaker 1: had their oxygen supply that was removed from them. Some
15:19
Speaker 1: of these people had to be placed on event just
15:21
Speaker 1: to keep them alive, to see if they would if
15:23
Speaker 1: they would survive, and of course, as we know, it
15:26
Speaker 1: didn't happen. Joe, how much pressure does it take to
15:31
Speaker 1: keep you from being able to expand your lungs? We
15:35
Speaker 1: know that some of these victims were as young as nine,
15:39
Speaker 1: so obviously it's going to be different I would imagine
15:42
Speaker 1: for a child as it would be for an adult.
15:46
Speaker 1: How much pressure does it take to keep you from
15:49
Speaker 1: expanding your lungs? Yeah, that's an excellent question, and it's
15:53
Speaker 1: going to be variable dependent upon the person. And say,
15:58
Speaker 1: it's going to be dependent upon their structure, if you
16:01
Speaker 1: will give me a little latitude here, it's going to
16:03
Speaker 1: be depended upon the architectural structure of their body. You
16:06
Speaker 1: know how robust they are, you know how muscular they are?
16:09
Speaker 1: What kind of what kind of medical condition are lack thereof?
16:14
Speaker 1: Do they have any Are they predisposed to any kind
16:16
Speaker 1: of medical problems like long problems or heart problems, anything
16:21
Speaker 1: that might inhibit their ability to function at a normal level.
16:25
Speaker 1: So you begin to impact them with weight. And let
16:29
Speaker 1: me give you an idea as to what happened as
16:32
Speaker 1: these individuals were essentially being I don't necessarily like the
16:37
Speaker 1: term crushed because it implies, you know, like you're like
16:41
Speaker 1: you're literally stepping on something to crush it. And I'm
16:44
Speaker 1: sure that there were blunt force trauma injuries that could
16:47
Speaker 1: be associated with stepping on and kind of crushing, if
16:50
Speaker 1: you will. But this is compression where you're pressing down
16:54
Speaker 1: tighter and tighter and tighter. So let's just say, for instance,
16:57
Speaker 1: one individual is laying on the ground and that's firm surface.
17:00
Speaker 1: We have to assume that the ground out there was
17:03
Speaker 1: probably an asphalt or concrete surface. And as bodies begin
17:08
Speaker 1: to pile on top of this individual, the individual if
17:12
Speaker 1: they weigh say, for instance, I don't know, one hundred
17:15
Speaker 1: and forty pounds, Let's say this little child, the child
17:18
Speaker 1: was only nine. That child is not going to weigh certainly,
17:21
Speaker 1: it's not going to weigh in excess of you know,
17:24
Speaker 1: eighty to ninety pounds. I would think at the top end.
17:28
Speaker 1: Then you have let's say, for instance, one hundred and
17:31
Speaker 1: seventy five pound man trips and falls on top of
17:34
Speaker 1: that child, and then another one hundred and seventy five
17:37
Speaker 1: pound man, and maybe you throw in somebody that weighs
17:39
Speaker 1: two hundred and fifty pounds, and all the while that
17:41
Speaker 1: child is being pressed down further and further and further,
17:44
Speaker 1: and his little body cannot compensate, It can't fight against
17:50
Speaker 1: the weight that is being applied to his body and
17:52
Speaker 1: his body's need to get that chest expanded so he
17:56
Speaker 1: can breathe the air in. So the more weight you
17:59
Speaker 1: have a the more difficult it's going to become. Now,
18:02
Speaker 1: I do know that you know I'd mentioned medical conditions.
18:05
Speaker 1: There was one individual in this group of ten where
18:09
Speaker 1: compression asphyxia was made note of that he did, in
18:14
Speaker 1: fact have drugs on board. I think that the individual
18:18
Speaker 1: had t HC on board. He also had methamphetamine and
18:22
Speaker 1: these sorts of things. So you begin to to factor
18:26
Speaker 1: that into that individual's ability to breathe in this highly
18:32
Speaker 1: kind of antagonistic environment. That's going to compromise their their
18:37
Speaker 1: body even further. Hold on, Joe, Yeah, what do you
18:41
Speaker 1: mean by that? You're saying it's going to compromise their ability.
18:45
Speaker 1: You're saying that just even if it's marijuana, let's say
18:50
Speaker 1: it's going to take you to what I mean, is
18:54
Speaker 1: it going to It's not going to lower your oxygen capacity,
18:57
Speaker 1: But how is it going to impede breathing? Well, yeah,
19:01
Speaker 1: I mean it could be marijuana or alcohol or any
19:03
Speaker 1: number of things, but it's going to impair your ability
19:07
Speaker 1: your response time for instance, it's going to slow your
19:10
Speaker 1: breathing anyway. So you're going to be compromised in that sense.
19:13
Speaker 1: And this individual, I don't know anything about his medical history,
19:17
Speaker 1: but if he has these drugs on board, I think
19:20
Speaker 1: that scientifically you have to kind of sit back and
19:23
Speaker 1: scratch your head and say, well, if he's got this
19:25
Speaker 1: history at that moment time where he has these drugs
19:29
Speaker 1: on board, how long has he been engaged in the
19:32
Speaker 1: behavior utilizing things like methamphetamine, which can have dire respiratory
19:38
Speaker 1: outcomes just in and of itself, and certainly it can
19:42
Speaker 1: lead to things like hypertension, increase blood pressure, that sort
19:45
Speaker 1: of thing, and that's never a good good situation to
19:48
Speaker 1: be in, particularly when you're panicked and your shallow breathing
19:51
Speaker 1: and all of these things that are going on. So
19:54
Speaker 1: it's a recipe completely for disaster. So if you have
19:58
Speaker 1: a clear mind and you don't have any kind of
20:00
Speaker 1: drugs on board, it's still gonna be tough, but can
20:03
Speaker 1: you imagine how further exacerbated this condition could be as
20:07
Speaker 1: a result of having something that would put you into
20:10
Speaker 1: an altered mental status. You know, you think about going
20:32
Speaker 1: to a concert. I can't tell you over the course
20:34
Speaker 1: of my life how many I've been to, particularly outdoor concerts.
20:37
Speaker 1: I love them. You don't have this expectation that when
20:41
Speaker 1: you go, your life is going to come come to
20:45
Speaker 1: an end completely surrounded by strangers, and that there will
20:48
Speaker 1: be other people to your left and to your right
20:51
Speaker 1: that are dying as well. What a horrible way to go,
20:54
Speaker 1: Jackie Joe. We know that these individuals night of compression asphyxia.
21:00
Speaker 1: We also know that some individuals fell to the ground
21:03
Speaker 1: and were trampled. As you were saying earlier, is there
21:07
Speaker 1: a difference in that kind of a knee injury? Were
21:09
Speaker 1: the people if they died on the ground, were they
21:13
Speaker 1: trampled or could they not breathe? Well, it's it's going
21:17
Speaker 1: to be a combination. I think that that when you
21:20
Speaker 1: begin to traumatize individuals by trampling them, and trampling, to me,
21:26
Speaker 1: implies not so much positional or compressionist fix the event
21:31
Speaker 1: that goes to blunt force trauma. All right, and you know,
21:35
Speaker 1: Nancy Grace and I have covered cases over the years
21:38
Speaker 1: that are quite brutal where individuals have been literally stomped
21:43
Speaker 1: to death. Okay, that's blunt force trauma. Now, these individuals
21:47
Speaker 1: may very well, and again I haven't seen the autopsy reports,
21:50
Speaker 1: but in an event like this, you're going to have
21:52
Speaker 1: blunt force trauma that can be identified on that And
21:55
Speaker 1: what does that mean, Well, you could very well have
21:58
Speaker 1: large contusions. And some of these contusions, and this is
22:02
Speaker 1: kind of haunting, Jackie, some of these contusions will actually
22:07
Speaker 1: have the appearance of a footprint. You can actually see
22:10
Speaker 1: a shoe tread that's left behind as a result of this,
22:13
Speaker 1: and that's just kind of a pattern injury, which is
22:16
Speaker 1: something that we look for in forensics all the time.
22:18
Speaker 1: You can have pattern injury, say, for instance, if an
22:21
Speaker 1: individual is stomped on the back back side of their leg.
22:24
Speaker 1: Let's say they're laying face down, you stomp on them
22:26
Speaker 1: on the back side of their leg as you're running away.
22:29
Speaker 1: Your footprint might be say the back of their thigh,
22:32
Speaker 1: but on the front of their thigh, there's also going
22:35
Speaker 1: to be an evidence of an abraided area that comes
22:39
Speaker 1: from the underlying surface. So that's happening as a result
22:43
Speaker 1: of this compression that's taking place, but it's quickly removed.
22:47
Speaker 1: You can have people that say, for instance, are not
22:50
Speaker 1: senseless because maybe the top of their head has been
22:53
Speaker 1: stepped on, they're knocked unconscious, and well, now they're in
22:57
Speaker 1: a compromised position where they don't have a level of
22:59
Speaker 1: consciousness but their body still requires oxygen and they don't
23:03
Speaker 1: have the ability to move and get up out of
23:05
Speaker 1: that area because now they don't have any sense about
23:08
Speaker 1: them to do this. That that primal thing has kind
23:11
Speaker 1: of left them at this point, because that that primal
23:15
Speaker 1: response to survival is left because they're unconscious, but yet
23:18
Speaker 1: you still have to breathe, and all the while people
23:21
Speaker 1: are piling on top of them, and that really paints
23:25
Speaker 1: this horrific picture. And you know, Jackie, one of the
23:30
Speaker 1: one of the things that you know, it kind of
23:32
Speaker 1: reflects back in my mind and I think about what
23:35
Speaker 1: they're faced with here in this case and making these
23:38
Speaker 1: diagnosis and what you know, what the road looks like
23:42
Speaker 1: going forward. First off, there is a level of horror
23:47
Speaker 1: to these desks that I don't think that many people
23:50
Speaker 1: can comprehend if you've never been in this kind of circumstance,
23:54
Speaker 1: and you know, you hear when you're around lawyers a lot,
23:57
Speaker 1: uh like I am, you know, and particularly in the
24:02
Speaker 1: civil context when you're talking about civil litigation as post
24:05
Speaker 1: criminal litigation. One of the things that one of the
24:07
Speaker 1: measures that they do in civil law, remember, you don't
24:11
Speaker 1: look for guilt or innocence in our guilt or not
24:14
Speaker 1: guilty in civil law, you look for damage is relative
24:19
Speaker 1: to a propensity of evidence. That means, how much evidence
24:21
Speaker 1: do you have that demonstrates what you're trying to trying
24:24
Speaker 1: to prove. They used to term pain and suffering quite
24:28
Speaker 1: a bit, and I don't know that there are many
24:31
Speaker 1: things that could surpass that. At this level where you
24:35
Speaker 1: have this much pain and suffering that's inflicted on people
24:39
Speaker 1: because it's a torturous way to die. You have an
24:42
Speaker 1: awareness many of these people may have that they don't
24:45
Speaker 1: have an ability to breathe and there's no way to escape.
24:48
Speaker 1: Can you imagine being this panicked in this environment? And
24:52
Speaker 1: interestingly enough, when you look at the history of compression asphyxia,
24:57
Speaker 1: and to give you an idea how far back goes
25:00
Speaker 1: in human history, there have been a number of crushing
25:02
Speaker 1: events that go hundreds of years back, you know, where
25:06
Speaker 1: people have panicked and run run over. But a lot
25:08
Speaker 1: of people don't realize that that compression asphyxia has actually
25:14
Speaker 1: been used as a method of execution, and famously, famously
25:19
Speaker 1: was actually utilized as a method of execution during the
25:23
Speaker 1: Salem witch trials. There was one fellow that had stated,
25:27
Speaker 1: and it's actually included in Arthur Miller's play The Crucible,
25:30
Speaker 1: and this is documented. The accused this guy being a witch,
25:34
Speaker 1: and they put him between two boards and began to
25:37
Speaker 1: stack weight on him and until he would confess. And
25:40
Speaker 1: the guy never confessed. And the only thing he ever said, Jackie,
25:43
Speaker 1: you know what he said, because he was not going
25:46
Speaker 1: to confess. He's a more weight, more weight, and they
25:48
Speaker 1: would put more and more stones on top of his
25:50
Speaker 1: body until he finally succumbed. And that's a very slow
25:53
Speaker 1: form of compression asphyxia. It's torturous. You said, it's a
25:57
Speaker 1: slow form, Joe. How long would it take for you
26:01
Speaker 1: to die due to compression asphyxia? How long did these
26:06
Speaker 1: victims suffer? I think that this is the real horrific
26:10
Speaker 1: part of it, and I have to go back to
26:12
Speaker 1: an example of say specific applied pressure. When you're talking
26:16
Speaker 1: about again in the case of Cabby Potito, where you're
26:20
Speaker 1: talking about where she was throttled, where she had had
26:24
Speaker 1: hands wrapped around her throat, and that is sustained pressure.
26:28
Speaker 1: Her death would have probably have been a bit quicker
26:31
Speaker 1: because with this kind of compression asphyxia, you might get
26:37
Speaker 1: a pause in there where the weight shifts. And this
26:39
Speaker 1: is a very dynamic environment because you've got people that
26:41
Speaker 1: are piling on top of one another and they're rolling
26:44
Speaker 1: about and this sort of thing. So you might have
26:46
Speaker 1: an opportunity in there where you're being compressed and all
26:50
Speaker 1: of a sudden the weight shifts, you can catch your
26:51
Speaker 1: breath again, but then the weight shifts back, and this
26:55
Speaker 1: could take I don't know, it could potentially take ten
26:59
Speaker 1: minutes for some of these people to have died. And
27:01
Speaker 1: I think that that goes to how torturous and laborious
27:06
Speaker 1: this event would have been. And that's because it's you
27:10
Speaker 1: have a shifting of weight that's going on because of
27:13
Speaker 1: the dynamics of the environment. Remember, this is a frenzied crowd.
27:17
Speaker 1: People are running about, people are screaming, people are rolling about.
27:21
Speaker 1: It's not like there's constant pressure being applied specifically to
27:25
Speaker 1: them for the entire duration until all life is gone.
27:28
Speaker 1: So it's very dynamic, and I think that's going to
27:30
Speaker 1: be very difficult for the medical examiner if they have
27:33
Speaker 1: to get on the stand in a case like this
27:35
Speaker 1: to actually give a specific measure of I'm Joseph Scott
27:43
Speaker 1: Morgan and this is body backs.