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‘Don’t die for Wireless’: Music fans call out festival for overcrowding

TikTok users have shared videos of the alleged overcrowding

Megan Graye
Monday 11 July 2022 17:21 BST
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Wireless Festival

Music fans have called out Wireless festival after several videos emerged online of apparent overcrowding in the audiences.

The caption “Don’t die for Wireless” has been trending on TikTok, with festival attendees sharing self-shot footage from the event.

The UK festival took place across two weekends in Crystal Palace, Birmingham and Finsbury Park between 1 and 10 July.

In one video, attendees can be seen tightly packed together and unable to move.

The clip, captioned “The scenes at Wireless were absolutely crazy”, also shows fans being helped out of the crowd by security guards.

In another video, a festival goer addresses Wireless organisers, telling them: “You need to sort out how many people you let in through the gate because it’s just not happening”

She also commented on the behaviour of other festival goers.

“There’s been so many horrible men who’ve just tried to shove past us, literally groping us and I’m not f***ing doing this anymore,” she added.

Other videos with the same tag have emerged that appear to be showing groups of people pushing past security to break into the festival.

In a separate Tiktok, another user filmed an entrance to the festival with the caption: “Getting into Wireless today was a joke, people were pushing so hard that the metal detectors and barriers fell”.

“There was blood everywhere and no security checks” the attendee claimed.

Met police issued a statement on social media regarding the incident. It read: “Shortly after 15:00hrs a small number of people tried to get through to Wireless Festival while others were queuing.”

“As a result of this, security staff put in a place a brief hold on people being admitted to the event to ensure the safe flow of people into the site. This caused a large crowd to form in the sea around the site.

“Officers assisted security staff with managing the crowd to keep people safe. We continue to work closely with the event organiser and other partners to prevent further disruption and we thank people attending for their patience, particularly in the hot weather.”

Asked for comment, a representative for Wireless directed The Independent to the Met police statement.

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