According to the information and judicial reports of the time there were several irregularities. Among them, they announced that the stadium employees did not open the sliding door in its entirety and the turnstiles remained in place throughout the match, they were not removed after the entry of the visiting party.
Given this situation, the inevitable happened: an avalanche caused many fans to fall, hit themselves or run out of air. The image, according to several witnesses, was tragic and some affirm that due to the crowding it rose half a meter from the ground.
“Suddenly, due to human pressure, a very strange effect took place and we began to take off from the floor. I was almost half a meter floating, and unable to move. Until at one point that pressure gave way and we started rolling over each other. It was then that my best friend, Guido Von Bernard, died from a blow to his head against the left wall,” one of the witnesses told the newspaper ‘La Nación’.
The criminal investigation ended without being found guilty of the act. Many affirmed that the exit was not possible because the Federal Police prevented it (in 1968 the country was governed by the military dictatorship of the self-styled Argentine Revolution of General Juan Carlos Onganía). Initially, two River managers were prosecuted for being suspected of negligence, but the Court of Appeals left the prosecution null and void and the case was filed.
At that time, the Argentine Football Association (AFA) decided that all the money raised in the matches played during the weekend be donated to the relatives of the victims, mostly young people and adolescents. Likewise, Boca organized a massive funeral with an emotional torchlight march.
Source: Ambito
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