Running of the BullsTunnel Crush

During the seventh San Fermín bull run in Pamplona, runners became trapped in a human pile-up at the entrance to the bullring / Plaza de Toros. Bulls and steers reached the blocked entrance and people were crushed, trampled, or gored. Local and international reports, plus Navarra government and local reporting, consistently tie the incident to the narrowed access at the bullring entrance.

Entrance to the Plaza de Toros / bullring in Pamplona, Navarra, Spain. More specifically, multiple sources describe the crush at the narrow entrance to the bullring, the access to the Plaza de Toros, the Callejón / entrance tunnel area, and the end of the 850-metre route through Pamplona. Navarra’s official note says the pile-up occurred “a la entrada de la Plaza de Toros de Pamplona”; Reuters says “at the narrow entrance to the bullring”; ABC says runners were stuck “in the narrow entrance to a bullring”; Diario de Navarra refers to the “montón del Callejón.”

14/07/2013 provided by user. Source coverage for the incident itself places the crush on Saturday 13 July 2013, during the seventh and penultimate San Fermín bull run in Pamplona.

Sources converge on 23 people taken to hospital / injured overall, with 19 linked to the pile-up itself. Two gore injuries are specifically reported in several sources. The most serious reported injuries included a 19-year-old from Vitoria with severe chest trauma and asphyxia syndrome, and a 28-year-old Irish runner with chest trauma/asphyxia; an 18-year-old from Azpeitia was gored in the axilla/callejón area; a 35-year-old man living in Cleveland, Ohio, was gored in the buttock/gluteal area on Estafeta. Reuters’ earliest report gave a lower immediate figure of four hospitalised, before later totals rose to 23.

No fatalities from this incident were verified in the sources reviewed. Follow-up reporting describes the most seriously injured runners as evolving favourably, and later discharge reports indicate recovery rather than death.