San Francisco police were called to the Stonestown Galleria Monday after thousands of Harry Potter fans showed up for an event that was only prepared to handle a few hundred.
The draw was Robert Pattison, a 22-year-old British actor from the Harry Potter movies.
Pattison played Cedric Diggory in the Harry Potter movies. He is now the stars of “Twilight,” which a vampire movie based on a young adult book.
Young "Twilight" fans and their parents were told they could buy a wristband at 9 a.m. that would allow them to come back to the mall at 6 p.m. for a T-shirt signing at the mall's Hot Topic store.
The store expected around 500 people. Instead, San Francisco police estimate the crowd at 3,000.
People said there was a lot of pushing and shoving as the mall opened. One girl suffered a broken nose and another girl fainted after she was pushed up against a wall.
Fan Hilary Baucher said someone started running toward the front the mall and that lead to what she described as a stampede of people.
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"We ended up at the front of the doors. We were totally smashed. We couldn't breath or move. It was pretty crazy," Bacher said.
The line stretched all the way around the block.
In the end, the evening event was canceled due to the high turnout. Police said they could not handle a crowd that big.
Many fans stuck around the mall anyway in hopes that things would change.
People had come from as far away as Hawaii and Arizona just to get a glimpse of the young star.
