Shanghai Stampede: 36 New Year’s Eve Revellers Killed After Tossing Of Fake Money

In a New Year’s Eve Shanghai stampede, 36 people were killed and at least 50 more injured, with some eyewitnesses saying it was due to too many people pushing for a glimpse of the riverfront.

Fox News reported that part of the stampede may have been caused by someone throwing fake money into the street from a bar above, resulting in a lot of pushing and shoving.

Chinese president Xi Jinping told the Shanghai government to get to the bottom of the incident as soon as possible, and ordered governments across the country to ensure that a similar disaster would not happen again.

A local man who brought one of the injured to a hospital told reporters that fake money had been tossed into the street. As people rushed to pick it up, the stampede was triggered.

ABC reported that another eyewitness, Cui Tingting, said she had picked up some of the bank notes, but had thrown them away when she realized they were fake.

“It’s too cruel,” she said, adding “People in front of us had already fallen to the floor, and others were stepping all over them.”

Social media was rife with photos from the Shanghai stampede, showing victims receiving first aid on the roadside, while large numbers of police officers cordoned off the area.

Fan, a relative of one of the victims, told reporters, “Many relatives have asked to go inside and asked the hospital to give us a list of the injured, including the conscious and unconscious ones who are being treated in there, but nobody got back to us.”

At the same time, the director of the Shanghai No. 1 People’s Hospital, Wang Xingpeng, said some of the injuries were “catastrophic.”

“Many of the injured suffered from severe crush injuries, including crush injuries to the chest, brain and abdomen,” he said.

The police are carrying out a full investigation into the Shanghai stampede to try to ascertain what sparked it in order to look into ways of preventing such a thing from happening again.