People who put stops in undoubtedly got stopped out. The market makers can see where the stops are in the order books, so they seized upon the excuse to take it down and ran with it -- so they could steal stock from those unwary/naive investors.

Never, never, never put hard stops in on these small stocks. Even big stocks on the NYSE can have these things happen. I know someone who, years ago, put a stop in on XOM, 10 points lower than where it was trading. Sure enough, "they" seized upon an excuse, plunged the price down dramatically for literally a few seconds, stopped him out, and then the stock went right back up and closed the day WELL into the green. He couldn't believe they'd do that for a few hundred shares, on a big board stock that always has huge volume. I believed it, though.