Jay-Z cuts Jay-Z's hair was not the only unexpected image at Yankee Stadium on Sunday night; the bigger disruption came first, when his final concert of the three-night run was held up for more than four hours after a security breach outside the venue. The show, set for 8 p.m., did not get moving until after midnight.
Yankee Stadium at 8 p.m.
Thousands of fans were left outside while the stadium was temporarily locked down, and officials later let people in beginning around 10 p.m. through a slow screening process. Jay-Z finally took the stage at about 12:20 a.m., telling the crowd, “For your guys' safety and everybody's safety outside, there's 10,000 people outside and I didn't want to start music and people get trampled,” and, “So really sorry for the inconvenience but I just wanted to make sure everybody was OK.”
Frederick Prince at the checkpoint
Frederick Prince said he was already inside when the breach began before 8 p.m., describing a scene where one person getting through seemed to pull others into the checkpoint. “It just looked like once one person got in, it was just like, yeah, like and other people just started to join in, and people were coming back to get their people, and it was it was crazy,” he said. “I saw it breached, like the door that was open,” he added.
Security, then the guests
A police source told Eyewitness News that a large group pushed and shoved through the checkpoints, while officials at one point would not let anyone in or out as they tried to regain control. The crowd-control risk recalled earlier mass-surge disasters, including nine deaths at a Sean “Diddy” Combs charity basketball game in Harlem in 1991 and the storming of the gates by 30,000 fans at the Copa America final in Miami two years ago. The concert moved forward only after that hold was eased, and the delay became part of the night’s structure rather than a footnote.
Jay-Z then brought out Beyoncé, Rihanna, Usher, Fat Joe, Jeezy, Pusha T, Pharrell and Jadakiss before the performance ended just before 3 a.m. Authorities reported no arrests, which leaves the open question where the breach started and how the checkpoint failed in the first place.
