“I put both my hands up to my face, because it hurt so bad and my hands were just covered in blood,” Lita Abella said.
For 63-year-old Lita Abella, going to the Super Bowl with her son was supposed to be a dream come true, but it all ended in a nightmare when she says she was suddenly crushed in what some are calling a “human avalanche.”
The educator said she suffered a concussion, broken nose and a torn rotator cuff, as well as visible bruising.
Abella says it happened just after the halftime show, when she was in her seat waiting for her son to return from the restroom. Suddenly, she says she was thrown out of her seat and fell two rows in front of her. She said she was left dazed and a bloody mess.
“I put both my hands up to my face, because it hurt so bad and my hands were just covered in blood,” Abella said.
When her son Christian returned, he was horrified.
“Heartbreaking, very traumatizing. Nobody wants to see a loved one in such pain, especially with that much blood,” Christian said.
The mom and son had been sitting in the nosebleed section for seats that cost them $9,000. Video taken before the incident shows the view from their steep seats at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood, California.
“When you’re walking by people, you’ll see that your ankle pretty much comes right where the top of the next chair below you,” Christian said.
He says any stumble could cause someone to fall forward onto the seats and people below.
Her attorneys call the seating at the stadium “defectively built.”
“A couple of fans were talking to each other, excited about what’s going on in the game. One turned around to high five the other, fell over and ended up impacting our client,” attorney Anna Okhovat said.
Police issued a statement saying, "There was no 'human avalanche' within section 522 the night of the Super Bowl and unfortunately Mrs. Abella was the only person who fell in that section and suffered an injury. An unfortunate incident which was not the result of a physical assault or a 'human avalanche.'"
Abella says she hopes someone caught what happened on video to back up her account.
