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Jimcs50
10-22-2004, 09:49 PM
‘Situation was dire’: Eyewitness details fatal Fenway riot
By Dave Wedge
Friday, October 22, 2004

Perched on a cement parking deck on Lansdowne Street early yesterday, I watched a tragedy unfold.

As an unwitting Victoria Snelgrove stood by a sausage cart with friends, six police officers on horseback and a handful of riot cops became surrounded by a surging - and increasingly hostile - mob of Red Sox revelers. Despite scattered fires, vandalism, a few scuffles and some arrests, the scene was relatively under control for a while.

But things took a deadly turn after a heated exchange between a mounted officer and a surly young man in a gray knit cap. After he refused the cop's orders to leave the area, the officer, from his horse, grabbed the man from the back of his shirt and tossed him to the ground.

The man got up and began hurling obscenities and making obscene gestures at the furious cop. Tensions quickly rose. Some in the crowd tossed bottles at police while the horses began getting out of control. Riot cops moved in and started forcefully moving people from the area.

At one point, I saw an officer toting a compressed air gun fire at least one round into the crowd. A split second later, the 21-year-old Emerson College journalism major was lying on the sidewalk, blood streaming from her face.

Standing directly above the scene, I watched her friends softly caress her head as she drifted in and out of consciousness. One felt for her pulse. Some in the crowd began screaming for an ambulance. Another cried, ``Call 911.''

At first glance, she seemed just a minor casualty in the foolish clash between drunken knuckleheads and police trying to reign in the chaos. But it soon became obvious the situation was dire. After about five minutes, an ambulance carved a swath through the crowd and the dying student was taken away on a stretcher.

Today, she's in a funeral home.

Jimcs50
10-22-2004, 09:51 PM
Now it hardly seems worth it, does it? Thank God the Spurs' fans behave like civilized humans when celebrating their team's successes. :(