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‘We Started Jumping And Boom’: 30 People Injured At Clemson Frat Party

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Neetu Arnold Contributor
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Thirty people were injured at a Clemson University fraternity party after the floor of an apartment collapsed in South Carolina on Sunday morning.

“Twenty-three attendees were transported from the scene to local area hospitals (Greenville Memorial, AnMed and Oconee Memorial) with varying degrees of injuries, but none were determined to be life-threatening,” the associate vice president for strategic communications at Clemson, Joe Galbraith, said in a statement to The Daily Caller News Foundation. “A number of other partygoers also arrived at area hospitals via personal transportation, bringing the total to approximately 30.”

Kappa Alpha Psi fraternity rented The Woodlands of Clemson for a homecoming weekend party, a Clemson official said in a statement to TheDCNF. The apartment complex was off campus and the incident occurred at 12:28 a.m. on Sunday.

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“We started jumping and boom! All you see was like black really,” Franzie Pendergrass, a witness, said to 7News.

The boom sound was when the floor dropped to the basement, according to 7News.

“Then I wake up, because I blacked out and I see girls everywhere with blood all over their face and everything like that,” Leroy Pearson, another witness, told 7News.

The event was attended by students and non-students, according to the Clemson official.

“[There were many people who had] many fractures, broken bones and lacerations,” Clemson Police Chief Jimmy Dixon said. (RELATED: West Virginia President Faces Off With Fraternities)

Clemson Student Affairs is still determining how many of the injured were Clemson students, according to Galbraith.

“We have asked our faculty to exercise some flexibility in attendance policies for those students who were involved in this traumatic event,” Galbraith said.

Collapsed roofs and balconies at parties have caused injuries at various universities, according to Inside Higher Ed. Nine students were injured at a party near California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo after a garage roof collapsed in 2015. Thirty students at Trinity College in Connecticut were injured after porches at an off campus house collapsed in 2016.

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