NEW YORK — Saturday marks 33 years since nine people were killed during a stampede at a celebrity basketball game at the City College of New York.
The winter quiet on the Harlem campus on Thursday seemed very different from the scene that evening in 1991, before the cheers that pierced the silence of the night turned to shouts.
This is what happened on December 28, 1991
“This was the place to be,” remembers Jason Swain, who was 17 when his big brother, Dirk, came home from Hampton University.
Swain did not join his brother’s group that went to the student government sponsored game hosted by Heavy D and a lesser known music producer Sean “Diddy” Combs.
“I had just bought a new pair of boots and I didn’t want anyone to step on them,” Swain recalls. “There were supposedly 5,000 in the gym, 800 in the stairs and 1,000 here.”
Major stars from Run-DMC to Jodeci appeared on the court, causing the crowd outside to grow larger than security could contain.
“They’re here saying ‘1, 2, 3 push!’” Swain said. “Dirk and the others were already there.”
The ensuing stampede crushed several and killed nine, including Dirk. All nine names are now recorded on a plaque outside Nat Holman Gym.
Swain hopes to release a documentary about the CCNY 9
At the time, the rising Combs was dropped from his label, but no one was ever charged with a crime. The families’ civil lawsuits against him and nine other defendants all led to an out-of-court settlement.
Swain has since turned his grief into a mission, spending decades interviewing other family members and witnesses and piecing together every available camera angle to capture the event in its entirety. His efforts to release a documentary and book for a wider audience have never fully developed until now, as interest in Diddy’s apparent demise grows.
“He never even said, ‘Sorry,’ or was responsible for it,” Swain claimed.
Swain calls it ‘karma’ in catching up with the fallen star, who is currently being held in jail without bail until his May 2025 trial on sex trafficking charges. Combs has pleaded not guilty.
Through the Dirk Swain Foundation, painful memories of the past continue to fuel efforts to share the victims’ stories. more than three decades later, a new crowd will gather and pay tribute to the CCNY 9. The memorial will take place Saturday at 6 p.m. at the gym on the corner of 138th Street and Convent Avenue.
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Jesse Mitchell
