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UPDATE 4:38 PM: Lionsgate just released the following statement about the death of the Twilight Saga fan who was killed in an accident in San Diego today.
Lionsgate, Summit and the entire Twilight community are saddened by the death of a Comic-Con fan today due to a traffic accident during the hours leading up to this year’s convention in San Diego. Our thoughts and condolences go out to the victim’s family and friends. She will be respectfully remembered this Thursday in Hall H.
PREVIOUS 1:15 PM: An unidentified woman was hit by a car and killed this morning outside the San Diego Convention Center while heading to line up for a Twilight Saga panel at Comic-Con. Local media reports that the 53-year-old, called “Gisella” by fellow Twilight fans on social media today, suffered head trauma and was pronounced dead at 9:51 AM, police say. ”Police said she was in a crosswalk and tried to run across Harbor about 9:20 AM. She tried to stop when she saw an oncoming Subaru but ended up tripping into the car”, the San Diego Union-Tribune reported. Sources tell Deadline the woman was returning to the line for Thursday’s Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 panel. “The driver of the vehicle was a 67-year-old while male who remained at the scene and was cooperative with police during their investigation,” San Diego Police spokesperson Lt. Andra Brown told Deadline. Comic-Con officially runs Thursday-Sunday, but fans often begin lining up days ahead to get a seat. The woman reportedly had been in line since Sunday.
Deadline's Dominic Patten - tip him here.
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They really need to re-think their systems down there. I know this is a random accident, but Comic Con has become too much of a mess every year. They should have a ticketing system to get into the individual panels so people don’t have to wait in line for 6 hours. The San Diego convention center (if they’re interested in keeping the business) should begin expansion on the floor space to open up more room. It is jammed in so tight and truly could be run in a more efficient way.
San Diego convention Center is expanding. Real fault here, in my opinion, is allowing people to line up a week in advance. It’s ridiculous and totally unnecessary. People shouldn’t be allowed to do that.
Yeah, totally agree.
In other news, nobody cares because this is an incidental death with absolutely no relation to Hollywood, Twilight, or the Comic-Con. It just happened to someone who was nearby and also a fan of a movie.
Wrong, this kind of incident is something comic-con organizers do care about. The woman died trying to get a good seat. 2 years ago someone was stabbed in the eye at comic-con, also because of seat problems. Even a few of these incidents can reflect really badly on the convention, parents may forbid their kids to go because of safety fears etc.
While I certainly HOPE Comic-Con organizers are concerned about this incident .. it’s also important to note that official Comic-Con personnel have been telling people specifically NOT to line up. ALSO, no one was stabbed in the friggin’ eye. I wish people would stop saying that. Some dude got scratched on his cheek with a damn mechanical pencil during a dust up over saving seats INSIDE Hall H. Lastly, while a tragic incident today, this woman was crossing the street against a DON’T WALK sign where vehicles had a GREEN DAMN LIGHT to go. There are a plethora of problems with the way Comic-Con is run, and a ton of ways it could be better, but the incident today and the scratched cheek aren’t the fault of SDCC organizers.
Wrong. Her family, friends, and the Twilight fan community care.
Twilight fans care because she was a person, for 1, and 2 she was apart of the twilight fandom.
This is very sad news.
It is also frightening, as it reminds me of an incident that happened just this morning. I was walking in a crosswalk, when a suited man, with his NOT-hands-free cell phone pressed against his ear, drove right through the stop sign without so much as a glance in my direction (even though I was barely a foot away from his car). And this happens quite frequently at this particular crosswalk. Unfortunately, I cannot avoid this crosswalk as it leads directly to my office building.
Way to personalize this event.
how insensitive, of course people care, that is someones family, and friend. you don’t have to be famous for people to care, so show some respect.
Uh, I care about this. You must be one of those people that never stops for people in the crosswalk…in HOLLYWOOD
Not completely, tek. It’s way too crowded, not only on the surrounding streets but also on the floor of the convention center.
A certain number of tickets are sold, but no one has any idea how many people are actually in the center at any given time, because there are no turnstiles that count them.
It’s a nightmare. You could lift your feet off the ground and simply let the crowds move you from one place to another. It’s lucky there hasn’t been an emergency that required people to evacuate quickly, because they would never be able to.
As for the street traffic, it’s also a nightmare. The shuttles for people who park off-site are inadequate and, even if you’re lucky enough to get on one, they can’t go more that 5 miles an hour because the streets are so congested.
Hundreds of people wait for traffic lights, and there isn’t enough room on the sidewalks to accomodate them, so some people step, or are pushed, into the streets.
I haven’t gone in the past two years just for these reasons.
I’ve gone for the last 15 years and didnt plan on going this year due to the amount of people that now attend. Buuuut, can you be a bit more dramatic? She wasn’t pushed, she walked into traffic when the cars had the right of way. Her fault.
As a decent human being, I care. May she rest in peace. My heart goes out to her family.
And as for it bearing no relation to Hollywood and Comic-Con, where would they be without the fans?
Absolutely sad.
I wonder if Pattinson and/or K-Stew will recognize this tragedy?
My prayers are going to her family and friends but I am sick of the twilight fandom saying they lost a member of their twi family. I am sorry but that gets on my nerves when fandoms says things like that.
I will say Comic Con does need to organize things better because its getting worse each year
I was two rows in front of where the incident occurred. So crazy.
Comic Con should go on for some two weeks. So that all people could come and won’t rush to get there as quickly as they can.
I agree that some sort of ticketing should be implemented for certain panels like this. For most panels at Comic con the existing system works, but there should be exceptions made.
I can understand getting in line a few hours before a panel you really want to see, and it is fair that the people who wait in line get in the room. However, no panel should have people lining up a week before the convention even starts.
The convention shouldn’t allow it, and the San Diego Police shouldn’t allow it. When the lines are clearly established and orderly, things work out fine. Speaking from personal experience, I actually enjoyed some of the lines at last year’s Comic-con because it was a chance to meet like-minded fans. But when things are not organized it becomes an absolute cluster-fuck, and people start losing their minds over who is going to get in and in what order it’s going to happen.
Maybe SDCC should have a ticket lottery that people can enter online to get tickets for each panel. Only people who have paid tickets to the con could enter the lottery, of course, and tickets could be non-transferable to prevent scalping and other forms of opportunistic behavior. That would ensure a more or less equitable distribution of tickets and get rid of the camping out ahead of time. (Until con officials start setting aside tickets for VIPs/friends, etc, instead of the general public….)
This should be a wake up call for the Comic Con organizers. They have fielded suggestions of moving to another site/city where these crowds could be better managed. How many tragic events have to occur before some serious thought goes into moving this convention to a safer and larger facility? It goes without saying that the ticketing system is out of date and needs a modern electronic approach to handle large panel sessions. Very sad and tragic. My condolences go out to the victim’s family and friends.
That’s how I wanna go!
Comic-Con needs to be better organized and maybe extend the festival a few extra days and hire extra security around the area to help people through the lines and such and control the traffic around that area a little better. Just a sad incident that took place.
Lots of people castigating SDCC for what happened. But from what I’ve read, the con had stated in advance that there will be no advance lining up until they were set up and previously in the day they had announced that they were still not ready for fans to arrive. And yet they did.
Sure, make it 24 hours, 365 days a year. Twi-fans would still line up for days before a panel and fight over (or scalp) tickets if they had a ticketed system in place. And oh yeah, move to an even larger facility so that even more people could get to go – which would only make the crowd problem… different.
My condolences to the woman’s family, but seriously, this was a tragic accident and not something endemic to SDCC.
Very sad.
I’ve been to the Con twice, and its a lot of fun. But its absolutely, positively mismanaged. And as it grows bigger and bigger each year, I keep thinking that more and more problems will erupt. The current system works for the smaller panels, but is an absolute nightmare for the bigger panels. I would suggest that certain panels fall to a lottery system, with people getting ticket to enter beforehand.
And last time I was there, they had some professional security, and those guys were generally quite good. But the volunteers with absolutely NO training are awful, rude and clueless, and contribute quite a bit to the chaos.
Good of Lionsgate to make this statement but I agree with the rest of the posts that the SDCC needs to address this issue by making adjustments to how they run things. This is a black cloud over everything because it appears from the outside like a tragedy that could have been prevented with better organization. That makes it difficult to read any of the news emerging from the panels without thinking about this sad incident.
What exact adjustments do you recommend to stop people from crossing against the light? Do you mean have a plethora of cops and security guards to control traffic when the convention is in session? Check? Ask people not to line up days before the convention? Check? Remove people from outside Hall H days before the convention? Check? Operate in a city that has traffic lights that tell people when to cross and when to go? Check?
What exactly are you suggesting they do? This was a tragic accident and I feel for her family, but no one, not even the convention organizers were forcing her to wait in line or run across the street.
^This, a thousand times this. This event has a lot of room for improvement. But none of those deficiencies had anything to do with this accident.
^Oh my god, totally…
How sad.
The Con should learn from this (although it is not their fault). They should set a policy where you can only start lining up for an event X-amount of hours prior. Lines forming DAYS in advance is unsafe and crazy. A ticketed system wouldn’t work, because they’d be gone in a second to people who would just re-sell them for exorbitant prices.
They do and people ignore them.
And that’s exactly what the con’s policy is: they had requested fans not to line up yet! But, oddly enough, it’s a free county and the streets are public.
A ticketing system could work.
You tie the ticketing system into the registration system. Each registered attendee has a number, and the ticketing system verifies identity, allowing only 1 seat per registered attendee. The system “knows” the seating capacity, and only issues tickets up to that number.
For the smaller panels, its no big deal… they just may never reach the panels seating capacity.
For those who are not connected via the internet, they can have a kiosk set up wherever tickets are available for panel tickets.
Every panel should be a ticketed event.
My condolences to the family for their lost.
Everyone, please stop saying that SDCC orgs should move the con. It won’t happen. They signed a contract with the city of San Diego a year ago for a 3 year contract. So we all got to get use to it. It’s insane that anyone would line up on a Sunday for a panel for Thursday. No movie and I mean no movie or show is worth it. I hits the web in a matter of seconds.
I’m so sorry to everyone that knew this woman she will be missed. Some of the Twilight stars Erik Odom (Peter breaking dawn pt 2) and Nikki Reed (Rosalie) tweeted that they are sorry for the womans death. At least the driver didn’t leave, he stayed, noy many do that. I’m sorry for your loss.
Let’s look at reality here people. Someone got hit crossing the street and it is extremely sad. However, if a cop had been there and she hadn’t gotten killed, she would’ve probably been given a $200 jay walking ticket. This is not Comi-con’s fault, this is an unfortunate accident that occurred, and occurs everywhere in the world, as long as people don’t pay attention when they cross. That being said, it’s still a terrible tragedy, but stop looking for outside sources to blame, idiots.
Thanks for the lecture, Captain Oblivious.
This con needs to move to Vegas. CES is a big as SDCC and the town doesn’t even breathe hard handling it.
Also the hotels will be cheaper and is easier to get around. People are paying $250/night for Days Inn in SD.
You don’t have to do any name calling. This is just people giving their opinion and nothing more. It’s not nice to call people names,I guess you were not taught any better. We can not say what happen or how it happen if we were not there.This is so unfortunate this happen and your hearts go out to her family and friends. This is no ones fault things just happen,I guess now maybe they will stop people from standing in line in days at a time.Good luck to everyone and God Bless.