Comic-Con 2014: 64-year-old Woman Hit By a Car During Annual ZombieWalk

Comic-Con International is a focal point for genre fans. But sometimes things can get messy when reality and fantasy collide.

According to Deadline, there was a violent incident during the annual ZombieWalk event in which fans wearing zombie makeup shuffle through the streets of the city. David Stafford of the San Diego Police Department told Deadline that a 64 year old woman was struck by a car driven by a 48-year-old deaf man, who was in the car with his children. “The entire family in the car was deaf, and they were scared,”

There are at least two conflicting accounts of what happened. Stafford says that the driver’s children were frightened and he attempted to drive forward after several minutes of waiting for the “zombies” to finish their run. The driver claims that the crowd then began attacking his car, which led him to strike the woman and she then fell under his car.

However, some of the unidentified “zombies” have claimed that the crowd attacked the car after the woman was hit, not before. That doesn’t excuse what happened, but it does change the narrative of the event.

The woman who was hit reportedly “suffered serious but non-life-threatening arm injuries when she fell under the car,” and she was sent to a local hospital for treatment. San Diego Police said that no arrests were made at the scene, but added that they hope to review videos of the incident to determine what happened.

Related: Protect Yourself at Comic-Con International

This isn’t the first vehicular incident at Comic-Con. In 2012, a fan was struck and killed by a car in front of the San Diego Convention Center while trying to get in line for a Twilight panel.

Another thing to consider is that over 130,00 people are crammed into the Convention Center and the surrounding area. With so many like-minded people around, it’s easy to forget that not everyone is going to welcome or understand events like ZombieWalk. It’s not clear if a greater police presence during ZombieWalk could have prevented this accident, but the response of the crowd obviously didn’t help.

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