The bar’s 52-year-old owner and two employees, aged 33 and 34, were detained in recent days for allegedly breaching alcohol sales regulations, police said in a statement without naming those arrested. The owner will appear in court on August 19 on charges related to the sale or supply of alcohol to minors, while the two employees have been fined 2,000 rand ($118) each. The youths, most of whom were teenagers, died on June 26 at the Enyobeni Tavern in Scenery Park, a borough in the East London seaside town, but their cause of death remains unclear. Survivors have described a struggle to escape the jam-packed space, with one reporting a suffocating smell. Sinovuyo Monyane, 19, said she struggled to escape through a door that was locked with people. “We tried to get through the crowd, shouting ‘please let us through’ and others were shouting ‘we’re dying, guys’ and ‘we’re suffocating’ and ‘there are people who can’t breathe’,” he told AFP. . Coroners work outside a tavern in the death of teenagers in East London, South Africa, on June 26, 2022. Oluthando Mthimkhulu/Xinhua via Getty Images Police have yet to complete their investigation, and although officials have ruled out foul play, the results of an autopsy have not yet been released. “Just as we said at the outset, the investigation is a process and must be handled with extreme care and wisdom in order to achieve the desired results,” Eastern Cape provincial commissioner Nomthetheleli Mene said in a statement. At a memorial service last week, President Cyril Ramaphosa blamed the deaths on the “scourge of underage alcohol” and vowed to crack down on “rogue” bar patrons who flouted regulations. “We still don’t know exactly what killed our children. But we do know that the law was broken that night, and probably many nights before that,” Ramaphosa said. Portraits of some teenagers are seen in empty coffins during a symbolic mass memorial service in East London on July 6, 2022, after 21 people died in unclear circumstances at a borough pub last month, in an incident that shocked South Africa. PHILL MAGAKOE/AFP via Getty Images