On Sunday, Italian police investigating a deadly disco stampede said they found a pepper spray can, and were questioning dozens of witnesses following accounts by concertgoers that a teenage boy had sprayed an irritating substance, triggering the mad rush by the crowd that caused the stampede.
It wasn't known if the can found was the one whose spray apparently set off the stampede about 1 a.m. Saturday in a crowd awaiting a rapper's performance in the Lanterna Azzurra (Blue Lantern) disco in Corinaldo, a small town in the Marche region of east-central Italy.
Five teens, all juveniles, and a woman who had accompanied her 11-year-old daughter to the concert, died in the crush of fleeing concertgoers who toppled over a railing atop a cement ramp outside an exit. The railing gave way, sending young people tumbling over it and landing atop of each other in the area below the ramp, about 5 feet below.
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