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As the Liverpool crowd poured across the stand, the Juventus fans panicked. Hundreds made a rush for the nearest exit, beyond a low wall at the bottom of the sloping spectator terrace. Some managed to clamber over the wall, dropping to the ground on the other side. Hundreds more were trapped, crushed by the weight of the crowd. Then, with a sickening crack, the concrete wall collapsed, killing some and spilling others onto the field in a murderous cascade of bodies and fractured concrete.
"There was a mass of crushed bodies," said Renzo Rocchetti, a Juventus supporter from Milan. "I saw people trampled to death under the feet of the frightened mob, stepping on their bodies, including many babies and children." Remarked an off-duty British policeman among the Liverpool supporters: "Those poor bloody Italians went down like a pack of cards."
Most of the 1,000 Belgian police assigned to the game were outside, trying to control drunken groups still attempting to pour into the stadium. Inside, helmeted Red Cross medics dodged bricks, bottles and smoke bombs as they worked among the dying and injured, frantically trying to resuscitate people who had been suffocated beneath piles of bodies. It was 30 minutes before ambulances arrived, and at first the dead were carried out of the stadium on sections of crowd-control barriers, some covered with flags and banners that only minutes earlier had been waved by cheering fans. The dead, their faces and limbs a grotesque purple, were taken to a makeshift mortuary outside the stadium, where priests administered the last rites.
In Turin, the home city of at least 10,000 Juventus supporters in Brussels, there was an outpouring of grief. Among the dead was Restaurant Owner Giovacchino Landini, 49. "Why did it have to be him?" cried his daughter Monica, 22. "He was too passionately fond of Juventus." Of the dead, 31 were Italians, including a ten-year-old boy and a woman. Also killed were four Belgians, two Frenchmen and a Briton who was a resident of Brussels. All the dead were asphyxiated or crushed. Ten spectators, all British, were arrested, none for alleged offenses committed inside the stadium.
Fearful of triggering an even more terrible riot if they called off the match, Belgian officials and members of the Union of European Football Associations decided that it should be played. "Call it a surrender to fear if you wish," said Association Treasurer Jo Van Marle. Italian Prime Minister Benedetto ("Bettino") Craxi, in Moscow for discussions with Soviet Leader Mikhail Gorbachev, telephoned Belgian Prime Minister Wilfried Martens after the riot to protest the decision. Said Martens: "I told him that the decision to begin play was taken purely for reasons of security." The crowd, which was largely unaware of the magnitude of the tragedy, watched the macabre match as helmeted riot-control police stood guard and ambulance sirens wailed.*