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The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper
Bad Sports: When Fans Turn Violent. Aired 8-9p ET
Aired October 11, 2025 - 20:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
ED LAVANDERA, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL CORRESPONDENT: Supposed to be a fun time at a sporting event, has turned into life-altering tragedy. So there's some real-life consequences to what happens at some of these sporting events around the country. Back to you.
[20:00:12]
SARA SIDNER, CNN HOST: Ed and I love our teams, but we're lovers, not fighters. Well, you got to watch this, The Whole Story with Anderson Cooper, Bad Sports: When Fans Turn Violent, airs next right here on CNN.
Thank you so much for hanging out with me this evening. Jessica Dean is back tomorrow at 5:00 p.m. Eastern. Have a great night.
ANDERSON COOPER, CNN HOST: Welcome to The Whole Story. I'm Anderson Cooper. The NFL season began just last month, and already there have been a number of viral videos of fights between rival fans, including this one at the Texans-Rams game, which left a female fan injured and bloodied after the brawl.
It's not just football. Baseball fields, soccer pitches, violent altercations are happening at sporting events all over the country, causing serious injuries, even death in some cases. It's left many wondering if it's too dangerous to bring their families to cheer on their favorite teams.
In this next hour, CNN's Ed Lavandera takes us inside this disturbing dynamic from the stadiums where it starts to the streets where it spreads, and talks to both the victims of this senseless violence and the fans who know what it's like to lose control of their emotions when it comes to the game. Some of the images you'll see in this hour may be disturbing.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
LAVANDERA: We are in Detroit, Michigan, and this city is on fire. We're in the midst of the NFL playoff season, just a few hours away from the kickoff between the Detroit Lions and the Washington Commanders.
Huge game. One of the things that I wanted to explore with this, I grew up a huge sports fan as a kid. I loved the Dallas Cowboys. Over the years, as I've gotten older, something's happened. These sporting events didn't feel the same to me. There was just something that was off. And then I started kind of noticing what seemed to me to be like an uptick in the amount of fights. It's really intense. Some have been deadly. Some have left people's lives completely shattered and changed. I wanted to explore whether or not these sporting events are any less or more dangerous. Like, what's going on?
ALEX CHAPMAN, DETROIT LIONS FAN: Let's go Lions on three. One, two, three.
CROWD: Go Lions.
LAVANDERA: You don't have any -- any concerns bringing your kids out here?
EVAN LEIBHAN, DETROIT LIONS FAN: No, we've -- we've seen a few, but they're few and far between. When you see the drama, sometimes there's other teams coming in.
CHAPMAN: I think we all agree it's sometimes too many cocktails. And then that escalates, and then there's an argument, and then that kind of turns into one, two, and three.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Hey, hey, hey.
LAVANDERA: Is this something that is an epidemic? Or is this just because of the proliferation of social media and everybody has a phone and a camera in their pocket? I think that's -- that's a great question and worth exploring. But regardless of whether or not it's gone up or it's gone down, it is happening.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): In 2024, 52 professional stadium security officials responded to a survey, 70 percent of participants said they felt fan behavior was worse now than five years ago. And fan violence is not just in the U.S., Europe and the United Kingdom are notorious for fans fighting during soccer games.
LAVANDERA: To understand how moments like that erupt, you have to walk in these crowds. You have to get up close to the front lines as you possibly can. And to do that, I thought of one person in particular, a man, a journalist by the name of Bill Buford. He wrote a book years ago called "Among the Thugs." He immersed himself in this world of British soccer hooliganism. And he experienced some of the most violent incidents at sporting events in a visceral way.
BILL BUFORD, AUTHOR, "AMONG THE THUGS": The first games I started going to were here at Chelsea. It was the shed and there were no seats. And it was remarkably filthy. And you got compressed with every male bloated human body, so intimate and so powerful smelly.
There's a kind of magical strength that comes to you when you're a member of a crowd, which is a little bit like going to war. I think you've seen it in American sports. There's a kind of restless energy and an undefined power.
[20:05:08]
JAMES HILL, DETROIT LIONS FAN: Now I'm ready to go.
LAVANDERA: You know how to handle this?
HILL: I'm used to this.
LAVANDERA: You know what you're doing.
HILL: Right. This is all part of the price you pay.
LAVANDERA: I'm built for this.
HILL: Grew up with the hometown team. My father used to take me to the games when I was a kid. That was when they played at the old Tiger Stadium over on Michigan and Trumbull. My oldest son, Alexander, he went to his first game at three months old.
LAVANDERA: That's funny. I grew up a Cowboys fan and my parents would take --
HILL: I don't hold that against you.
LAVANDERA: I appreciate that. I guess it's just part of that family history experiences that connect us to these -- to these sports and these -- and these events.
HILL: The Lions are part of the fabric of Detroit. If you're a natural, native Detroiter, you grew up cheering for the Lions through good, bad, you know.
LAVANDERA: And a lot of bad.
HILL: And a lot of bad. If this city were to win a Super Bowl, I mean, that would be like world peace in Detroit.
LAVANDERA: Yes, yes.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Go Lions.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Let's go.
HILL: This is Eastern Market. This has always been a very big central area for tailgaters. Typically on game days, this area would be teeming with people.
LAVANDERA: I mean, it doesn't feel like a playoff tailgate to me out here right now.
HILL: No, I have video footage from when I walked through the market last year during the playoffs. It was a party, packed.
LAVANDERA: What happened?
HILL: Shooting.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A man shot into popular tailgating area in Eastern Market. Police say after a confrontation, killing two people. UNIDENTIFIED MALE: It was going all well, good vibes. Everybody was having fun, drinking, enjoying themselves. And then everything just went left.
HILL: As I was going up Wilkins here and got to Orleans, I saw ambulance and police car coming. And that's what happened. One shooting undid all of that.
LAVANDERA: It's got to make you a little sad to see it like this.
HILL: It is. Because coming to the tailgate for a lot of us, particularly when the team wasn't doing well, that was the best part of the game.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): I found Lions fan Fahad Yousif tailgating on the other side of Eastern Market.
FAHAD YOUSIF, DETROIT LIONS FAN: Eastern Market, Strat 2. Best Lions tailgate in the city.
LAVANDERA: OK. You're out here all the time, every -- every game?
YOUSIF: Yes, as of -- as of late, this is the spot.
LAVANDERA: This season's been a little bit rough for you though, right?
YOUSIF: It's -- it's been challenging. Yes, yes, yes.
LAVANDERA: What's happened?
YOUSIF: I had an incident, got my season tickets revoked.
LAVANDERA: You got your season tickets revoked?
YOUSIF: Yes, I was season ticket holder, got -- got my tickets taken away because of a small incident on the field.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): That incident went viral.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Who are you talking to like that? That's a fan.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Yusuf was on the field as a perk of his ticket package, which allowed him to choose one add-on bonus for the 2024 season.
YOUSIF: I was on the field for the Packers game at home, and I was just walking past the Packers sideline, talking a little crap, telling them they're going down. We're sweeping them.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The Green Bay Packers head coach saw Yousif taunting his players with a throat-slashing motion.
YOUSIF: And that look forward did not -- did not like that. He came at me a couple times. I was having fun. I thought it was all in -- in good fun, but no, he wasn't feeling it. I got to do whatever I can to get back into this stadium.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Three hundred level. Guy not breathing.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:10:42]
LAVANDERA: What is it about a team like this that just brings out this much passion in you?
YOUSIF: I mean, a team like this has gone through so much. It's gone through so much adversity. And -- hey, let's go. This is what it means? Baby, this is what it means.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's go Lions.
YOUSIF: Let's go baby. Come on. That's your answer right there. That's your answer.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Fahad Yousif says he couldn't help himself once he got close to the rival team.
LAVANDERA: What made you want to talk smack in that moment to this other -- to talk to other teams?
YOUSIF: Other teams, just Packers, biggest rivals are just right there on the other side yard, the other side from me, 10 yards away. So, just talking a little junk to them.
LAVANDERA: And he gave -- he gave it back to you a little bit?
YOUSIF: Oh yes, he wasn't happy. I was having fun. I thought it was all in good fun, but no, he wasn't feeling it.
MATT LAFLEUR, HEAD COACH, GREEN BAY PACKERS: He was talking junk to our players. I thought it was pretty unsportsmanlike, like I've never seen that. I've been on many fields and usually they police that much better.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The NFL does try to do that. In 2008, the league implemented a code of conduct to keep fans from acting out in stadiums. Violators can be ejected from the game and have their season tickets revoked. Yousif was removed from the field at halftime.
LAVANDERA: You can't have season tickets anymore?
YOUSIF: No, I can't have season tickets anymore.
LAVANDERA: Forever?
YOUSIF: Forever. Yes.
LAVANDERA: Oh, that's got to hurt.
YOUSIF: It does, but hey, I've made some awesome friends throughout all this. Like, look at this. UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Let's go Lions.
YOUSIF: Come on. Let's do it here. We're good to go, man.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Yousif was also banned from attending any NFL games until he took the league's $250 code of conduct class. Enacted in 2012, it requires fans tossed for unruly behavior to take an online course covering topics like game day empathy, stress management, and alcohol abuse.
LAVANDERA: What kinds of things are they telling you in this NFL class?
YOUSIF: It's just like anxiety. Sometimes you can get some anxiety before games and how to control that and binge drinking, which sometimes happens a lot.
LAVANDERA: Do you think it happens too often?
YOUSIF: It does happen too often, yes, yes.
LAVANDERA: Have you stopped and thought about what it is about sports that makes us want to do what you did that day?
YOUSIF: You've got to love a sports team. It's -- it's got to run deep, you know, so it brings out the craziness in all of us sometimes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Yousif completed the conduct course about a week after the incident on the field.
YOUSIF: I got my certificate, you know, I'm a good fan.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The certification is a badge of honor. He can now purchase single NFL game day tickets again.
LAVANDERA: What does it say? A certificate of completion, Ford Field fan code of conduct class.
YOUSIF: Yes. It's kind of opened my eyes to, like, the bigger picture.
LAVANDERA: So you pay a little bit more attention to where the lines of good behavior are.
YOUSIF: Sure, sure. Right there.
LAVANDERA: Bill Buford knows extreme team identity can trigger extreme behavior. It's one of the reasons some fans cross the line.
BUFORD: If you're a Yankee fan and you're going to the World Series and the Dodgers beat your Yankees, you feel that deeply and you're depressed for weeks. It's an engagement with your team.
LAVANDERA: That's an intense feeling that these sporting events bring out in people.
BUFORD: With a certain kind of audience, male, certain age, adrenaline, needing to establish supremacy.
CHIEF TODD BETTISON, DETROIT POLICE DEPT.: This is the Detroit Police Department's real-time crime center. We're able to monitor crime in real time. This right here is the nerve center.
LAVANDERA: It's Detroit Lions game day. I imagine this is a -- it's a serious night here in Detroit.
BETTISON: Very serious. The Ford Field security is excellent, second to none. We have well over 100 officers at any given point assigned inside. On top of the security officers, I think that we do a great job here intervening very, very quickly. And I'm not aware of anybody seriously being hurt here at all other than the one incident in our Eastern Market District area.
LAVANDERA: In that situation, it was the tailgating area for the Lions game?
BETTISON: Yes, yes, yes.
LAVANDERA: What made that situation escalate?
[20:15:01]
BETTISON: Argument and, you know, individuals having weapons. And one of the things that we did is create areas of gun-free zones. Also, the adding of the high-density weapons detectors. That right there, we haven't seen any issues since.
LAVANDERA: When your officers are watching stuff unfold on these cameras tonight --
BETTISON: Yes.
LAVANDERA: -- like, they know things can go bad very quickly.
BETTISON: Yes. They're monitoring -- they're monitoring for, you know, elevated voices. And they're not going to wait just for the first blow, per se. Even if a little brawl broke out, we're there to break it up so quickly. And it's consequences when you do that. You don't get a second time to do it because you get banned. You're not going to be back in there fighting again. We'll put you on a list. Your butt won't be there.
LAVANDERA: How many people are on that list?
BETTISON: You can ask Ford Field. Ask the Lions about that one.
LAVANDERA: We did reach out to Ford Field and the Lions and the National Football League. In fact, we contacted all four major sports leagues, but they all declined to speak with us. But I did speak with a major league baseball security source, a source who can't speak on camera, but did say fan violence is on the rise. And the source also added that sports leagues know this is a big problem, but they don't want it to get any attention.
BETTISON: We haven't seen really an uptick of it.
LAVANDERA: You don't think so?
BETTISON: I don't. No. I think that everything that happens now is captured immediately because everybody has a cell phone with a 4K camera on it. People pull their camera phones out and it's uploaded to social media immediately.
LAVANDERA: It's kind of part of the journey that we're on here is trying to figure out what could rise to the level of wanting to create a situation in a scene where you come to blows with somebody.
We are outside Gillette Stadium, which you see behind me. This is home to the New England Patriots. And I think it's safe to say that it's also home to one of the most intense fan bases in the NFL.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): It's where Patriots fan Dale Mooney, husband and father of two and a seasoned ticket holder for 30 years, went to the game with friends and never came home after a fight in the stands.
JOE KILMARTIN, EYEWITNESS: It was 10 o'clock on a Sunday night.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): I met up with an eyewitness at a sports bar across from Gillette Stadium.
LAVANDERA: This is the video you shot that night.
KILMARTIN: Yes. It's right there immediately when I started. I was up in the 300 section. We were playing the Dolphins and it was a pretty normal game. The Patriots were down from what I can remember, which has become typical, sadly.
And I had noticed people arguing throughout the game, but that's common. I didn't think anything of it. Security had intervened a few times. Mr. Moody, he was kind of heading over to the next section and, you know, willingly engaging in the fight. And then the other people were kind of, if you want to come over here and do this, let's do this. And the next thing I know, the fight shifted to the next section.
LAVANDERA: What were people arguing about? What were they fighting about?
KILMARTIN: Once I noticed he had a Dolphins shirt and he had a Patriots jersey, it was self-explanatory.
LAVANDERA: You're three rows away and this thing is escalating.
KILMARTIN: Yes. It was 10 o'clock roughly on a Sunday night and I think just alcohol time. At that point, the Dolphins were winning and I think they were rubbing it in and somebody just didn't want to hear it.
LAVANDERA: Were there people trying to break it up? Or there --
KILMARTIN: I believe the Dolphins fan's friend was trying to pull him off and trying to separate them.
LAVANDERA: It just looks like a sea of people.
KILMARTIN: Yes, I was able to get closer, as you can tell. And then the final seconds of the video, you can see Mr. Moody slumped over.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: We got EMT coming at 300 level. They're performing CPR right now.
KILMARTIN: As the paramedics came, people lied him down underneath the seats on the flat surface, so the paramedics were able to perform CPR.
LAVANDERA: Do you feel like sporting events are becoming more violent?
KILMARTIN: I think the drinking is becoming an intense atmosphere. I think the aspect of people gambling on sports betting is definitely contributing to people's anger. And it's not as much a friendly, ha- ha, you're from a different city rivalry. It's your team cost me money and now I can't pay my rent. It's contributing to higher rage at games.
LAVANDERA: You come to a sporting event and you witness someone lose their life.
KILMARTIN: Yes, it's not what you plan on, obviously.
LAVANDERA: Not at all.
KILMARTIN: It's a mix of a lot of bad things that lead to people making bad decisions, and I think that's unfortunately what we saw that night.
LAVANDERA: Dale Mooney's death here at Gillette Stadium was originally ruled a homicide, but since then, prosecutors have uncovered more evidence. The autopsy showed that Dale Mooney died of a heart condition, and other video evidence from other cameras inside the stadium that captured the full picture of how it all unfolded.
PETER ASPESI, DEFENSE ATTORNEY: That stadium video is very clear. You can focus in really close so you can see exactly what happened. My client was just simply trying to defend a friend of his who got attacked by somebody who wasn't involved in the initial fight. It became pretty clear that they'd probably never, that the government could never prevail at a trial. I think that became apparent.
[20:20:01]
LAVANDERA (voice-over): We attempted to reach the prosecutor in this case, but never got a response.
LAVANDERA: The criminal charges against the two men who were originally facing charges for Mooney's death have been dropped.
Do you think that you see a lot of fans that are just looking to pick a fight?
KILMARTIN: You put 60,000 people into a stadium, you're going to have that one guy that's looking to start trouble. It's statistics.
BUFORD: The drama of witnessing violence close up really agitates the whole psyche and the body and adrenaline, and drinking does have the effect of not suspending the breaks.
LAVANDERA: We see fights at a concert or a bar, but I think the violence that we see at sporting events is different.
BUFORD: It's almost like a continuation of the sport. It's whatever's going on in the match and all the frustrations of the match, tragedy of defeat. You're participating in the game even though you're -- you're a spectator.
VICTORIA GUNNING, RICHARD SELLS' SISTER: It is not safe to take your family to the games anymore.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:25:48]
LAVANDERA: You got to the point when you were writing your book, "Among the Thugs," it felt like you got the sense that you could almost figure out when things were about to erupt.
BUFORD: I could see it on his face. Something bad here was going to happen.
LAVANDERA: Some of the videos that were showed you, the violence at American sporting events. What do you think is behind that?
BUFORD: I think what you're seeing is kind of a contagion of violence. Ten years ago, people were arguing. You know, they had some bad words between them. They would maybe get sulky or swear or storm off. But now it goes pretty quickly to violence. And once that's planted, it's quite hard to eradicate.
LAVANDERA: One of the first really violent incidents that captured my attention years ago happened here at AT&T Stadium. The Dallas Cowboys were playing the New England Patriots in October of 2015. The Cowboys had just lost that game 30 to 6. But there was a sea of fans out here, tailgating, eating and drinking throughout the afternoon. The night ended in a deadly shooting.
GREG MILLER, EYEWITNESS: I had my back turned. All I heard was a gunshot. The security definitely stepped up. People coming in with guns.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Victoria Gunning's brother, Richard, went to that game with his fiancee, who was five months pregnant at the time.
GUNNING: One of his friends called and said they had a booth set up out there to come out and enjoy the day with them. I saw pictures of my brother having fun. Everybody out there just having a good time. Never dreaming that he was going to lose his life that day.
LAVANDERA: So where did all this go down, Matt? MATT RIVERS, ASSISTANT DA, TARRANT COUNTY: So we'll pull up right here. It was a 3 o'clock kickoff. People start showing up for the tailgate sometime around noon. Lots of alcohol involved. You can actually pull onto the grass. That's where people will unload their tailgates onto the concrete. The defendant, Marvin Rodriguez, and a group of his family and friends were out there. The victim, Richard Sells, had some loose affiliation with Marvin and his family.
They watch outside. People continue to drink and cook. As the game is concluding and the sun's starting to go down, Arlington Police Department, who's out there doing security, trying to get people to kind of wrap it up.
Marvin's brother, Candido, who was intoxicated, was not happy about having to leave the tailgate. And he started a verbal argument. But a large fight breaks out.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): CNN obtained dramatic cell phone and police dash cam footage. It played a crucial role in the criminal trial.
RIVERS: There's several different groups of people fighting. There are police that are responding to the fight, because at this point it had been going on for approximately 20 minutes.
LAVANDERA: A 20-minute fight?
RIVERS: A 20-minute fight. Shirts are coming off. Beers are being thrown. Piles of five or six people in various different sets of fights. It's pandemonium. Marvin is involved. He's fighting. At some point, he gets pretty beat up. He leaves where the skirmish is, and he goes to his car. And he gets a gun, and he comes back.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I need to pull out a gun right now, too. What the --
RIVERS: Marvin somehow makes his way over to where Richard Sells is. He goes behind him, kind of wraps his arm around and sticks a gun to the left side of his neck. He pulls the trigger at some point, as Richard Sells is one knee, as the first patrol officer is pulling into the lot, shots are fired.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, I think I've got shots fired.
RIVERS: When a shot rings out, the defendant tried to jump over one of these walls, and that's kind of where he dropped the gun. The dash camera actually shows him right after the shots are fired. And you see Richard Sells on the ground.
LAVANDERA: The victim was on the ground right over here?
RIVERS: Right here. Yes, in this little lot. The squad car actually pulls up right here, like at the edge of the street. And they're trying to block it off so emergency medical personnel can come in and tend to him. They don't know if he's going to live or die at the point. And he's being tended to by his wife or fiancee at the time.
[20:30:02]
LAVANDERA: And did he die at the scene?
RIVERS: He did go to the hospital. It was clearly like a very fatal wound.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The shooter, Marvin Rodriguez, was taken into custody and charged with murder in the shooting death of Richard Sells.
RIVERS: Nobody expects a gun to be pulled out in one of those things. Like you fight, you punch each other in the face and you go home. I don't think anybody thought that it would go this far.
LAVANDERA: When the shooter was convicted of murder and sentenced to 20 years in prison, did you find justice in that verdict?
GUNNING: Even then I thought it was a slap on the wrist. I mean, it's cold blooded murder. Our family is destroyed.
LAVANDERA: I mean, the other tragedy of all this is that your brother had a child who is never going to get to know her father.
GUNNING: That's right. He would have been a great dad. She lost every opportunity to know what an awesome dad she would have had.
LAVANDERA: Nine years after the shooter was convicted, sentenced to prison, he got a new trial.
GUNNING: Yes, sir.
LAVANDERA: In the second trial, Marvin Rodriguez, the shooter in this case, actually put on a self-defense case and that actually helped him this time around. He was convicted not of murder, but of a lesser charge of manslaughter and was sentenced to only 10 years probation. So he was allowed to go free.
GUNNING: I was shocked, devastated, appalled.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): And according to court files, Rodriguez's probation does not prevent him from attending sporting events. Efforts to reach Rodriguez or schedule an interview with his attorneys were unsuccessful despite repeated attempts.
LAVANDERA: To make sure I'm clear on this, the fight starts when Marvin Rodriguez's brother throws a beer can?
RIVERS: Yes.
LAVANDERA: I mean, you know, not to put too fine a point on it, but like, it all just seems so stupid.
RIVERS: It is tragic stupidity. We see it a lot across the country that these sorts of incidents happen. In some situations, it could be people are rival fans, but in this case, everyone was a Cowboys fan. I think the main factor was alcohol. You have way, way too much time to be out there.
LAVANDERA: What do you want people to know about what happened to your brother?
GUNNING: That it is not safe to take your family to the games anymore. My brother was an innocent victim, viciously murdered. It's a horrible, senseless shame.
ROBERT, FORMER HOOLIGAN: Was I a hooligan? Yes. I was well known for having a one arrow.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:37:23]
LAVANDERA: As we continue on our journey into exploring sports fandom. We had to come to London, England, because this is the origin one of the places that has been the most notorious when it comes to the craziest and most rabid of fans.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): In January, violent clashes between fans of rival clubs Manchester United and the Scottish Rangers football club erupted on social media. Dozens of soccer fans were arrested. And then in May, riled up fans left a trail of damage ahead of the Europa League final between Tottenham Hotspurs and Manchester United.
LAVANDERA: We're on our way to one of the final games of the season for West Ham United here in East London. West Ham United and its fan base says been involved in some of the more notorious violent incidents in recent years.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Like this huge brawl that erupted in the stands and then went viral during last year's West Ham thriller against rival club Arsenal. Fan violence appears to be on the rise in the United Kingdom. According to government data, during the 2023, 2024 soccer season, there was a 42 percent increase in public disorder arrests compared to the season before.
LAVANDERA: I feel like even in the last year there seems to have been a resurgence of violence. Have you seen that?
BUFORD: I don't know if it's a resurgence so much as it hasn't ever really gone away. The big wakeup call was in the -- the Euros, the 2020 Euros that the final was here in London. It was a very big moment where England might actually win -- win a trophy.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): He says the hysteria combined with pent up COVID-19 lockdown frustration resulted in thousands of ticketless rabid fans storming Wembley Stadium.
BUFORD: To think that every Saturday there are these arenas with thousands and thousands of people watching a live game in which the outcome can reverse in the last minute, in the last seconds, there might be spoiled chances, there'll be penalty kicks which are missed. The game itself is so difficult to win and score. And it's different from American sports, which always feel like you're being fed sugar. This is -- this is like, you know, you got to get there, you got to get there and you don't get there. And that produces so much adrenaline and frustration.
[20:40:04]
What's happening in the States is different because it's not group violence. The stuff that I was seeing when I did my own investigation, it might involve 200 people, 1,000 people, 2,000 people, 4,000 people.
The violence that I witnessed in the 80s was as much a social thing as it was a football thing. I went into it with all the obvious theories. This was during Margaret Thatcher's Britain, and it was a tough time for a lot of people who didn't have a lot of money. This is the disenfranchised. This is how they're expressing themselves. This is the angry people. And they were not disenfranchised and they were not poor and they were not angry. They had good jobs, they had families, they read, they had opinions.
But for a moment, it became a fashion and they would gather in huge numbers to participate in this experience. It took a long time for them to admit that they one of their, you know, most exciting pastimes was to meet in gigantic gatherings and beat each other up. I would ask them things like, you know, what is your strategy? What do you do? They used to fight for a long time, but now they have to bring knives because they only get a really quick chance to get into a fight and succeed and get out.
I remember most vividly when West Ham came to Manchester. That was a piece of orchestrated wonder. All the Man United fans were hanging out at a pub. Nobody was being too explicit about why they were there, but they were there because at 1:33, the train from London was arriving. They knew that West Ham would be coming down this ramp, and suddenly you had a mob of 2,000 people, and they all started going up to the station, marching, marching, faster, faster, chanting, chanting. And they're saying, kill, kill, kill, kill. And I was trying to get up to the front and try to get to the front, and suddenly they went, yikes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): It was just one of the many mob scenes Buford witnessed. He eventually made his way deeper into a Manchester United hooligan firm, as they called it. He traveled with the ringleaders to a match in Turin, Italy.
BUFORD: It was a windy, dark night. I realized that the fans were held back because that was the practice. You hold back the visiting fans so they don't engage with the home fans. This man with his family, he could see what was coming, and they were getting close, and then they just run over him, run over him. I've never seen people getting kicked in -- kicked in the head close up.
It's not getting kicked in the head like you see in a movie, you know, it's a soft sound. It's like sneakers on human tissue or on hair. It's like, you know, it's a completely somehow so much more graphic and disturbing.
LAVANDERA: How many of those types of sporting tragedies have occurred here? BUFORD: Well, Heysel Stadium is the other big tragedy. That was Liverpool fans having a go at some Italian fans who turned out to be sort of elderly Italian men and families. So violent, the structure gave way and people were crushed to death.
LAVANDERA: Wow.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): He's talking about the 1985 disaster at the European cup final at Heysel Stadium in Brussels, Belgium, a wall collapsed when Italian soccer fans were trying to escape an attack from Liverpool fans, killing 39 people. Nearly four years later, England's Hillsborough Stadium became the scene of the deadliest incident in British sports history. Ninety-seven Liverpool soccer fans were crushed to death in the overcrowded stadium, many by a wall that collapsed.
BUFORD: Fans were being pushed in and pushed in closed up against the fence and then people try to lift someone over the top who passed down. It was horrific. This was the whole concept of the terraces. I'd never seen anything like it. Terraces were just steps -- just steps to go all the way up, all the way down. There was nothing like a fire regulation.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The Hillsborough disaster prompted the British column government to enact a series of changes at U.K. stadium.
BUFORD: They abolished the terraces, they introduced seats, they stopped alcohol. The police presence has now become much more sophisticated.
LAVANDERA: More civilized.
BUFORD: More civilized. I mean, the people actually wearing quite nice clothes today. The tickets are -- are much higher. It'll be televised. There's a father with -- with a couple children. There's more children, there's more children. They introduce civility.
LAVANDERA: I'm on the train to Manchester, England, home of Manchester United Football Club. And this is one of the most stored recognizable sports franchises in the entire world. And the team stadium, Old Trafford is also hallowed ground for many football fans.
What does it feel like coming back?
BUFORD: Exciting. We're approaching the corner of the pitch here where Eric Cantona was kicking a corner or Giggs or Beckham.
[20:45:05]
LAVANDERA: Where would you sit?
BUFORD: Oh, well, you know, when I was coming is, it was, where did you stand.
LAVANDERA: When you have 74,000 fans in a stadium like this, is controlling those passions a little bit concerning at times? PAUL ETHERINGTON, SECURITY OLD TRAFFORD STADIUM: It is. I mean, if you go back to the 1970s, when we had a lot of hooliganism and a lot of issues with -- with rival sets of fans, we don't tend to have that. Maybe somebody's had a few too many drinks or something like that. But generally speaking, there's -- there's very little.
LAVANDERA: I'm kind of fascinated as an American fan. If I went to a sporting event, you're going to have opposing fans kind of mingled with each other, but here they're segregated?
ETHERINGTON: Yes. I mean, you look behind you'll see the segregation. It's literally green netting on the seating line.
LAVANDERA: Oh, I see.
ETHERINGTON: So you'll have a row of security staff just literally separating the home and the away fans.
BUFORD: I kind of liked the intimacy. I liked being in a crowd where you could feel the response of every spectator around you. When you got in here, it was, I don't know, it was a little bit like going to church. And, you know, I got in with a group of people and most of them, I liked these bastards. They were -- they were my friends and I -- I felt a perverse kind of community here.
LAVANDERA: As we arrived here in Manchester, were surprised to see one of Bill's old friends waiting for us at the train station.
ROBERT: Yes. You're looking well, man.
Was I a hooligan. Yes, I was, but I like to think I was a bit of a gentleman rather than -- than a thug. I was well known for having a one arrow, so if you come near me, you were going to get put down.
LAVANDERA: How did you enter this world? How did you get into this?
ROBERT: I run away from home when I was 14 and I came to Manchester, and right on that corner up there, I was watching some kids from Salford picking pockets. It was locked right out of Oliver Twist. I've started following these kids and we're going around the back alleys emptying wallets. We were feral. I was sort of rejected as a child. You know, these kids and these people became my family, this institution. You become a part of it.
LAVANDERA: So following Manchester United for free basically --
ROBERT: Yes, yes.
LAVANDERA: -- became your sport?
ROBERT: It was. Yes. It was like a fix. It was like a drug. And then you have to start coming every week and it become -- it becomes more powerful and kind of spiritual connection to it. Something led me here to this space, to this -- to this energy, because I couldn't identify with religion, with the invisible concept of God and praying for things that you never get. At least here I got something. I got fulfilled.
LAVANDERA: Violent fans aren't just a football problem. When we come back, the story of a baseball lover who almost died because he was a San Francisco Giants fan.
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
[20:51:53]
BRYAN STOW, GIANTS FAN: I wakeup every morning and I lay there thinking, what have I done to deserve this?
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The deep scars and damage are still visible more than 14 years after the attack.
STOW: My short term memory is not good. You can ask me something that happened 40 years ago and I could tell you, but I don't remember what I had for dinner last night.
LAVANDERA: Were you always a sports fan?
STOW: Baseball, I was born a San Francisco Giant fan.
LAVANDERA: What is it about sports that you love so much?
STOW: The camaraderie.
LAVANDERA: I'm surprised to hear, like, do you go to games often or?
STOW: Yes, as often as I can. Unfortunately, I don't drive anymore, so I'm ready to drive right now, but apparently my mom says I'm not. And I go, when am I going to be ready? She didn't know. Didn't have answer for me.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): You might recall the story of San Francisco Giants fan Bryan Stow. Back in 2011, Stow and some friends traveled down to Los Angeles for opening day. His beloved Giants were playing the Dodgers. Little did he know that wearing the Giants colors as he left the stadium that night would make him a target.
STOW: I was wearing the obtrusive fans colors. And Dodgers and Giants have been at war ever since they started in New York.
LAVANDERA: Can you take me back to the day that this happened to you? Do you remember the game itself that day?
STOW: Boom. Wiped it from my brain.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Yet Stow gives a vivid account. He's heard the story countless times from friends who were with him that night.
STOW: March 31st, 2011, I was a paramedic at the time. Myself and three other paramedics from Santa Clara County drove a car down to Los Angeles to watch the Giants hopefully crush the Dodgers. The Giants end up losing that game, and we're walking back to the car and they heard somebody running up behind us. LAVANDERA (voice-over): According to his friend, Stow was blindsided by two men in the parking lot wearing Dodgers jerseys. He was punched in the head, collapsed and kicked in the head three more times.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: He's breathing. He's got a pulse, but he's not conscious. We need an ambulance right now.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Stow was beaten so severely that part of his skull had to be removed. He was placed in a medically induced coma after surgery.
LAVANDERA: You spent nine months in a coma?
STOW: Yes. And my parents didn't know if I would make it alive, I guess. Surprise.
LAVANDERA: How are you able to laugh about what you've -- what you've been through?
STOW: With what happened to me? You have to be humorous because I could be at home lulling over this. My life sucks. I'm in pain and stuff. But it helps to be funny. It gets me through it. I have to come up with new jokes because a lot of times my mom's like, I've heard that one.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Two, three.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The 56-year-old former paramedic and father of two, divorced before the incident, has been cared for by his parents and sisters since he left the hospital.
STOW: When I was 18 and moved out, it was like, later. And then I wake up from my coma and I'm back at their house in my old room.
[20:55:07]
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Stow had to relearn how to walk and talk.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Big step.
LAVANDERA: Have you ever gotten a rundown of all of the injuries you suffered?
STOW: Yes. I had brain surgery. My knee wouldn't bend. Now my knee can bend that much. My shoulder was screwed up. I had this shoulder done. Now I can move it that high, only my hands are messed up. I had this done. Tracheotomy.
LAVANDERA: I just can't help but think, like, how in the world did you survive this?
STOW: Darn lucky, I guess.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You kick back.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Bryan Stow has made a remarkable recovery. But shouldn't comeback stories be the tales we tell about the athletes on the field, not the fans who simply come to watch them play?
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: OK, how's that?
LAVANDERA (voice-over): At the time, the horrific incident sparked a massive manhunt by the Los Angeles Police Department. They scoured the city looking for the men who attacked Stow.
CHARLIE BECK, FORMER CHIEF, LAPD: I'm asking the fans that may have some information to please come forward.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Investigators chased hundreds of leads.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Mr. Norwood and Mr. Sanchez --
LAVANDERA (voice-over): And two months later, in July 2011, after eyewitness accounts, police arrested Luis Sanchez and Marvin Norwood --
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Yes, your honor.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): -- for the savage attack of Bryan Stow.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: A photograph that shows a taped off area parking lot --
LAVANDERA (voice-over): In 2014, the tragedy played out in a courtroom. Defense attorneys argued there were two altercations, and the taunting was on both sides. But the suspects incriminated themselves while in custody, unaware they were recorded after their arrests.
MARVIN NORWOOD: I was involved. Pretty sure I'm going to go -- go down for it.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Witness testimony also placed them at the crime scene. And in the end, both men pleaded guilty.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: You know, you are the biggest nightmare for individuals that attend public events.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The judge didn't hold back while sentencing the men.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: Oh, you're smiling. You think it's funny? No civility, no respect for individuals.
LAVANDERA: Did the culprits that did this to you, have they ever reached out to you? Have they ever tried to communicate anything to you?
STOW: No. That'd be -- that'd be too easy. One of them got four years, and the other guy got eight years in prison. They should still be in prison for life.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The attackers have been released from prison, and they're not far from Stow's mind. STOW: I just want to know why they did it, why they singled me out.
LAVANDERA: Has it changed how you feel about sports and going to a sports stadium or an arena?
STOW: I don't trust anybody. Being sober now makes me aware of what's going on. Had I heard those knuckleheads running up behind us, I could have turned and been prepared.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): Stow's family sued the Los Angeles Dodgers for millions of dollars in a civil lawsuit. Much needed money for Bryan's enormous medical bills. The lawsuit accused the Dodgers of providing inadequate security the night Stow was beaten. Lawyers for the Dodgers argued that Stow was intoxicated and aggressive before the assault and that, security wise, the team acted reasonably. After seven weeks, the jury ruled partially in the family's favor.
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Were any of the following negligent Los Angeles Dodgers LLC. Yes.
LAVANDERA (voice-over): The Stows were awarded about a third of what they asked for $18 million, which they say was mostly used for medical and legal fees and not nearly enough to cover the care Bryan will likely need the rest of his life.
STOW: My job was what I loved to do. I liked saving lives. And ever since this happened to me, it's gone.
LAVANDERA: Is there any other kind of job that you'd want to do?
STOW: Working at a carnival?
LAVANDERA: Not a bad gig.
STOW: I'm not kidding. Take it on the road. I could speak every single day about getting injured and fan violence, and it's something that needs to be talked about.
LAVANDERA: Do you ever wish you had not gone to that game?
STOW: No. Being part of the game, it's in me. It's what I deserve to be doing. Rooting on my team. I need to be at the game.
LAVANDERA: It shocked me that Bryan Stow's sports bastion still burns so intensely. In this storage room, I keep my own sports memories. In these dusty bins, I have a bunch of old autograph baseballs. I've got my first baseball glove. Isn't that great? I've got a Roger Staubach autograph football. Oh, this is a great ticket stub. 1989 Texas Rangers playing the Boston Red Sox. It was my dad's birthday. It was an absolutely perfect day. I can remember it vividly.
[21:00:04]
Looking at these old ticket stubs, it reminds me that what they actually symbolize is the powerful memories. And it's what keeps us coming back to the games.
