AT LEAST 21 people were crushed to death in a nightclub in Chicago after a fight between three women caused a stampede among more than 1,500 revellers.

Four people were killed at the scene and dozens more were critically injured as clubbers struggled to escape the first-floor dance club after a canister of mace was released into the crowd, allegedly by the club’s security guards. Seventeen people died in hospital.

The deaths could have been prevented, fire officers believed, if the back door to the club had not been locked from the outside, blocking the only emergency exit.

The panic started at about 2am when three women, who had been arguing on the dance floor of the crowded E2 club on Chicago’s South Side, became involved in a fight that was quickly broken up by bouncers. As the women were separated, however, some of the 1,500 revellers began to scream and run for the door as they felt the burning effects of mace, also known as pepper spray, in their eyes and lungs. It was not clear yesterday if the chemical was sprayed by one of the bouncers to subdue the fighting women or whether it was sprayed by someone on the dance floor.

Hundreds were crushed as they tried to escape the club while blinded by the spray.

“It was like the Titanic,” said Kirsty Mitchell, who saw the stampede spill out of the narrow club doorway on to the street. “That’s how it actually was — the Titanic at a nightclub.”

The screams for help could be heard up to an hour later as teams of firefighters, police officers and paramedics struggled to revive the unconscious and help the 49 seriously injured into ambulances. One man could be heard screaming repeatedly: “Help me, help me. My legs, my legs,” over the noise. He was silenced as more people trampled over him in an effort to escape.

Investigators from the Chicago Fire Department were examining why the back door of the club had been locked from the outside. As panic grew, the screaming crowd quickly filled the stairwell to the back door, which is where most of the deaths are believed to have occurred. The first partygoers down the backstairs were crushed and suffocated as hundreds more fell on top of them.

The route to the front door, which was also a single narrow stairwell, was not wide enough for the remaining hundreds of people to fit through.

Fire chiefs said preliminary investigation had uncovered a raft of fire code violations, including the use of propane gas canisters to fuel portable heaters. They are also examining whether the club owners had breached legal limits in allowing so many people in.

“Everybody (was) smashed, (crushed), people crying, couldn’t breathe,” Reggie Clark, a clubgoer, said. “Two ladies next to me died. A guy under me passed out.”

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