A stampede at this year’s Roots Picnic in Philadelphia has left five people with injuries—an unfortunate turn of events as the festival experienced its biggest year yet.
The commotion started on Saturday, during 21 Savage’s set at the annual music festival in Philadelphia, ESSENCE confirmed. A false gun scare had some of the 25,000 attendees fleeing Fairmount Park in a rush, Rolling Stone reports.
A fist-fight was said to have broken out near the stage, eventually leading people to think there was an active shooter.
“People were running and a few people were knocked over,” ESSENCE’s supervising producer Sean Wellington, who attended the festival, said in a statement. “I helped one gentleman up who had fallen over and had his wallet and phone knocked out of his hand. A couple I attended with used a guardrail as shelter from the rush. Everyone thought it was a shooting.”
Philadelphia police confirmed that no gun was found at the scene. Live Nation, which organizes the Roots Picnic, told ABC 6 Philadelphia that the stampede was sparked by a “medical scare.”
According to the Philadelphia Fire Department, three people were taken to area hospitals, with one suffering a broken leg from the stampede.