‘Blown out of proportion’: Atlantic Beach leaders respond to bike fest ‘stampede’

Interim town manager Titus Leaks is pushing back Tuesday after the Atlantic Beach Black Pearl Cultural Heritage and Bike Festival landed in headlines again this year.

Atlantic Beach is less than one-quarter of a square mile. Although Leaks says the festival draws larger crowds every year, when asked about plans to handle the growing festival in such a small area, he maintained the event was under control.

“It was never not under control,” Leaks told The Sun News.

Leaks and Mayor Pro Tem John David in an interview Tuesday said the crowd incident around 1 a.m. Sunday morning that left three people hospitalized was “blown out of proportion.”

“SLED and EMS and Highway Patrol did everything they could,” said Leaks. “They responded within seconds. SLED was on stage within a minute, and the plan that they had in place definitely, definitely worked.”

A similar incident happened last year during the bike fest when 12 people were sent to the hospital after fights created a mass panic during the concerts, police said. People were injured when they were trampled trying to leave the crowded festival.

Horry County Fire Rescue released a statement on social media May 24 roughly two hours after the “stampede incident,” describing it as a “mass casualty incident” because 19 people were injured. According to Atlantic Beach leadership, the one person running sparked a “chain reaction” in the crowd.

“Most of their injuries, out of the 19, three people were transported to the hospital, but the 16 people that were injured were minor scrapes and bruises that were treated with a Band-Aid,” Leaks said. “So, mass casualty is kind of an overstatement of actually what happened.”

Leaks pointed to law enforcement coordination to bring in emergency medical services and officers from the South Carolina Law Enforcement Division, the South Carolina Highway Patrol, the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources and the Horry County Sheriff’s Office, saying the town prepared for festival safety. Atlantic Beach also suspended traffic on Friday and Saturday night.

“We did everything to make the situation as safe as possible, even what happened, only happened for 15 seconds,” said Leaks.