Pandemonium erupted outside an "
America's Next Top Model" casting call in midtown yesterday when an overheating car triggered a stampede of catwalk-craving cuties. Screaming as they ran for their lives, hundreds of hotties in heels toppled over barricades along W. 55th St. after several people in the crowd started yelling, "There's a bomb!" By the time the model madness ended, six women were injured and two women and one man were busted for inciting a
riot, authorities said.
"The girls were running like it was 9/11 part two," said
Jennifer Brown, 27, of
Kensington, Brooklyn. "I feared for my life."
The audition for the show on The
CW, which for the first time was open only to women under 5-feet-7, was doomed from the start, several said.
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Scores of aspiring models slept overnight outside the
Park Central Hotel, hoping to be the first to sashay before the hit show's casting agents.
But shortly after the sun rose, women began arriving and lining up
indiscriminately.Tensions quickly boiled over.
Things only got worse when the dolled-up ladies were told if they stepped out of the line, they couldn't come back in.
"I had to pee in a cup and change my clothes in the street," said
Mona Knight, 18, of the
Bronx, who arrived at 11:30 p.m. Friday night. "There was no organization whatsoever."
Cops arrived and placed barricades along the street. But by that point, there were already several thousand women lined up. A handful of women started fainting after getting pressed up against the wall, witnesses said.
"Everyone was so compressed, I don't think they
could breathe," said
Alex Saavedra, 23, who escorted his girlfriend to the audition. "Then they started passing out."
A fight broke out between two men who had been taunting each other for several hours, witnesses said.
Cops intervened and pulled the men off the line. One of them threatened to return with a gun, heightening tensions among the already-frazzled women.
Soon after, a black
BMW with smoke pouring out of its hood pulled up in the street near the line, sending the sea of underdressed women scrambling to get away.
"
The metal barricade fell down," said
Kiara McCarthy, 19, of
Levittown, L.I. "All of a sudden we heard this roar from behind us and we looked behind us and there's a wave of people falling on top of us."
Gabrielle Rose, 25, said several women started crying out in pain.
"We all fell on top of each other," said Rose, of
Scranton, Pa. "People were squished against the wall, screaming, 'I can't breathe! I can't breathe!' "
A total of six women were injured, authorities said.
Two were transported to
New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell in stable condition, authorities said.
In the wake of the stampede, cops arrested three people:
Clem Clemmons, 40;
Vanessa Quiones, 20, and
Michael Edwards, 24. All were charged with inciting a riot.
A CW spokesman referred requests for comment to a
CBS rep who did not return phone calls or e-mails.
No more women were allowed to audition after the stampede, leaving many diminutive ladies devastated that they missed out on an opportunity to make it big.
"I'm 5-foot-3. There's no way I can make it into a model agency," McCarthy said. "They would turn me away at the door. We had an opportunity and it was taken away from us."
Isis King may not have won America's Next Top Model when she was a contestant on the show's 11th cycle, but she scored an even bigger prize when she appeared on The Tyra Banks Show Monday – a marriage proposal! King's boyfriend, Desmond, got down on one knee on the show's set and asked King to marry him.
