The event was billed as the first annual Heavy D and Puff Daddy Celebrity Charity Basketball Game. Promoted heavily on Kiss 98.7 FM, the game attracted a star-studded roster: Michael Bivins, Boyz II Men, Run D.M.C., Big Daddy Kane, Jodeci, and Ed Lover from Yo! MTV Raps, among others. Tickets cost $12 in advance and $20 at the door, with flyers promising that proceeds would benefit an AIDS education group. The combination of hip hop's biggest names and an affordable price drew massive interest -- far more than the gymnasium could hold. By 5:30 p.m., with hundreds still waiting outside, the doors were closed.

Around 7 p.m., people who had been turned away broke through a glass door and surged toward the gymnasium entrance. The crowd funneled down a short staircase. At the bottom, the doors opened inward -- into the lobby, not outward into the gym. As pressure built from above, those at the bottom had nowhere to go. The doors remained closed for up to fifteen minutes while the crush intensified. Two 911 calls came in at 7:14 p.m., one reporting shots fired. A police sergeant on scene radioed back that there was no gunfire, and the ambulance dispatch was mistakenly canceled. An ambulance was not sent until 7:22 p.m. and arrived six minutes later. By then, eight people were dead or dying. The ninth victim, Dawn McCaine, age 20, succumbed to her injuries days later.

Mayor David Dinkins ordered an investigation that took 17 days and included over 107 interviews. The resulting report, titled "A Failure of Responsibility," distributed blame broadly. Police had not intervened quickly enough when the crowd grew unruly outside. City College officials had taken a hands-off approach to student-organized events and failed to investigate warning signs about the event's scope. Sean Combs, then known as Puff Daddy, had delegated planning to inexperienced assistants and failed to purchase required insurance. Student leader Cassandra Kirnon had dismissed administrators' questions and misled them about the performers. And the crowd itself had ignored directives, rushing the entrance after being turned away. No one was ever criminally charged. The investigation could not determine who had closed the critical door at the bottom of the stairs.

At the memorial service for victim Sonya Williams, Al Sharpton and Louis Farrakhan spoke to the mourners. Mike Tyson, who had been inside the gymnasium when the crush happened, attended as well. Families filed wrongful death lawsuits; the first, on behalf of Dawn McCaine's family, sought $500 million. In 1997, Combs paid $50,000 to the family of Sonya Williams. CUNY overhauled its security policies in response to the tragedy. In 2006, Jason Swain -- the younger brother of victim Dirk Swain -- directed a documentary called City College 9, preserving the memory of the nine people who came to a basketball game and never went home. The gymnasium still stands on the campus in Hamilton Heights, a quiet building that carries the weight of a night when everything that could go wrong did.