One year ago Tuesday, panic broke out at a second-floor nightclub when security guards reportedly used a chemical spray to quell a small fight. It sparked a rush to the exit that left 21 people crushed to death in a stairwell.
Families and friends of the E2 nightclub victims grieve the loss of loved ones, but the hundreds who survived the tragedy struggle, too. They live with the terrible memories of that night and deal with the unexplainable reasons why their lives were spared.
It plays back like a movie he wished he never saw. Packed in the E2 stairwell with other clubgoers screaming and passing out around him, Amishoov Blackwell felt a young man reach out and hold his hand.
“He said ‘I’m not going to make it. If I don’t make it, tell my momma,’ then I saw his head collapse, and I felt the grasp get lighter and lighter. I lifted his arm, and it was limp,” Blackwell said.
That’s when reality set in. He became frightened, and one resolution leapt forward.
“I thought ‘This is how it’s going to end. This is how it’s going to end. This is how it’s going to end,’ over and over through my mind.”
The Feb. 17 nightclub tragedy that left 21 people dead spared Blackwell and his friends.
That night, as he waited to check his coat, the crowd surged out the door toward him, pinning him to the wall. He and his friend Sean Ford made it to the stairwell, where they were crushed into the pileup of people until rescuers pulled them off one by one into the main club area.
“It looked like a makeshift morgue with girls laid out on the floor. … Sean and I helped out the paramedics and fed people ice. People were yelling to their friends, ‘Please wake up!’ It was complete pandemonium.”
Now, even a year after the E2 event, Blackwell, 31, said he can’t shake the paranoia.
He checks for exit doors in large venues and stays near them. He used to hit the clubs three times a week; now he heads out maybe once.
In his working life, however, Blackwell manages a nightclub and skating rink in Gary. He says the tragedy won’t prevent him from staying in the industry, though it has changed his approach to day-to-day life.
“It gave me a reality check: You’ve got to get your life together. … It’s grounded me. I don’t hold grudges. I’m more thankful for everything.”
Still, the night haunts him. Blackwell remembers too well the cries for help, the oppressive heat and the terror of being trapped. And he struggles with the fact that he lived.
“People were doing the same thing that I loved doing for the last 15 years. Then an incident breaks out, the smoke clears, you have to be the one to go to someone’s parents and tell them they’re not coming home,” Blackwell said.
“It could have been one of us.”
SHAMAYA MOBLEY
‘I DON’T EVEN DRIVE BY THAT PLACE’
Shamaya Mobley’s eyes fill with tears as she reads a poem dedicated to her best friend Bianca Ferguson, one of the 21 clubgoers crushed to death at E2.
“I just feel so lonely now because we did everything together,” the 29-year-old says. “I don’t even drive by that place, so I don’t have to think about it.”
But every Sunday–the day the tragedy happened–the memories rush back. In the past year, she’s never gone out that night. Now, she doesn’t go out much at all, preferring to stay home and read by herself than constantly look over her shoulder in paranoia.
Mobley stands up, illustrating to her visitors how the mass of bodies pushed her into a corner and how Ferguson disappeared into the swelling crowd. Then she sits down and hangs her head.
“When I left E2, I thought she was going to meet back up with me. I thought she was going to be at home. I thought she was going to call and say she had a ride. … By the time I got to the hospital, she was gone.”
Mobley, a customer service representative, didn’t go to work for the next week. She stayed at her mother’s house, but couldn’t sleep there either. When she returned to work, she was still overwhelmed. Sometimes she’d head to the office bathroom, stand in the stall and cry.
“I feel so bad. I feel like I’m to blame,” she says.
Mobley isn’t sure how she’ll feel Tuesday, the anniversary of the tragedy, but she’s clear about one thing–the future of the E2 club.
“That place should be demolished. If it opened back up, it would be like a stab in everybody’s heart.”
HAROLD PERKINS/KIZZY SHERROD
‘I VALUE MY LIFE EVEN MORE NOW’
The thing is, it was a great party.
“I guess that’s what it was, it was too good to be true,” said Harold Perkins, who arrived early at E2 with his friends. “There was so much joy that night, at first.”
Tired, happy, the group was gathering by the coat check to leave when the first wave of people swept through the door, pushing them apart.
Kizzy Sherrod was pinned against the wall before someone pulled her into the coat check room. From there she watched her childhood friend Bianca “BeBe” Ferguson, 24, struggle in the crowd, before the next big push sent Ferguson from sight and ultimately to her death. For Sherrod, it’s the most vivid scene from the tragedy.
“I think about how she looked. She was so scared, and there was nothing I could do for her,” she said. “Sometimes I think, how did she suffer, how badly did she suffer?”
Perkins, 29, who ended up at the bottom of the E2 stairs, reeled from the tragedy and BeBe’s death.
“I tried to go to work, and I was so emotional. It was killing me, killing me because she was so close to me,” said Perkins, who still works at the Cook County Election Board.
Sherrod, 25, couldn’t sleep or eat after the night at E2, she said, a situation compounded in the following weeks by the Rhode Island club fire that killed 97 people.
Life is so different now, the Garfield Park neighbors and friends say. They don’t go to clubs much, and they are hyper-vigilant of their surroundings. Family and work is the focus.
“Before, we just knew we were going to see each other every day, and now we just don’t think like that. We’re careful. We’re just trying to strive for the goals we want to accomplish,” said Sherrod, who works with community outreach programs.
Perkins agreed. “I was allowed to walk out of that club that night,” he said. “I value my life even more now.”
– – –
Where they were
When authorities arrived to start clearing hundreds of partygoers from the E2 nightclub, these survivors were among those inside.
Kizzy Sherrod: The mass of people pinned her to the coat check until someone pulled her to safety.
Shamaya Mobley: Pushed from the door to the coat check to the corner outside it.
Amishoov Blackwell: Was near the coat check but ended up trapped in the stairwell.
Harold Perkins: Traveled from top of stairwell to near the front door.
