2 Deaths at Bonnaroo...

[NewRider]

just saw on the CP24 ticket that there were two deaths at "Bannoroo" in Nashville, TN this past weekend, the deaths are suspected to be drug related.

[NewRider]

found an article:

MANCHESTER, Tenn. — Coffee County authorities yesterday reported a second death in two days as heat and drugs mixed on a 700-acre cow pasture where 90,000 alternative music fans gathered for the Bonnaroo music festival.

The deaths are the first in the three-year history of the event.

Sheriff Steve Graves said he would not speculate on why this year's festival has had two deaths when there were none the first two years.

"I don't have an answer for that," Graves said. "There's certainly more people there. That may have something to do with it. We just hope we don't have any more."

By comparison, three people died at the three-day Woodstock rock music festival in 1969 in Bethel, N.Y.

In Manchester, Graves said, a woman was taken to Manchester Medical Center around midnight Friday and died there early yesterday. She was later identified as a 22-year-old from Missouri.

Friday morning a 20-year-old man from Michigan was taken to the same hospital, where he later died.

According to Coffee County Chief Deputy Jerry Crabtree, the woman's identity was unknown at first, but later authorities were able to learn her identity and contact her family. They were thought to be on the way to Tennessee.

As with the first death, the woman's body was taken to Nashville for an autopsy by Dr. Bruce Levy, medical examiner, Graves said.

"We suspect a drug overdose because of the preliminary toxicology report, but we won't know for sure until an autopsy is done," the sheriff noted of the dead woman. He added that there was "no indication of trauma on the body."

Authorities are waiting on autopsy results on the man before commenting on his cause of death.

Festival organizers and fans were dismayed at the deaths. Iris Hairgrove of Portland, Ore., said she was "very concerned" about the deaths.

"How sad that it happened here," she said. "This is a close-knit community when you come here. You have to experience it to understand. People care about one another."

Hairgrove said it's understood at festivals like Bonnaroo that drug use occurs.

"But the vast majority of the people I talk to do not use anything that has been chemically altered into their bodies," she said. "Mostly it's beer and pot, and who can blame them. I don't want to put something in me that somebody had to heat up to a certain temperature or made in a bathtub."

Joel Byrd of Fort Wayne, Ind., said, "It really does concern me that some people don't know when to stop or know their limits."

Festival spokesman Rick Farman expressed sympathy for the families.

"We never want something like this to happen," Farman said.

Informed that the sheriff indicated that the woman's death might have been caused by a drug overdose, Farman said, "We feel confident that our procedures and our policies are in place. People should know how we feel about illegal activity."

But there is no doubt that drug use is going on inside the venue. In Friday's edition of the Bonnaroo Beacon, a newspaper published daily for festivalgoers, an article titled "How to survive Bonnaroo," quotes Glenn "Raz" Raswyck, veteran director of an emergency medical unit that provides first aid at festivals like Bonnaroo.

Raswyck advises patrons in the article to "take personal responsibility for your actions. You are responsible for what you smoke or ingest. … Hallucinogens are unpredictable at best. Experimenting for the first time at a huge gathering like Bonnaroo can lead to an overwhelming trip."

Farman said the festival takes a proactive stance against illegal activity "every step of the way."

"It's absolutely what we do. It's on our Internet site. It's on the map. It's on the brochure. We do not condone illegal activity," he said.

"But at the same time, people are going to do what they're going to do."

The three deaths at the historic Woodstock music festival, which Bonnaroo is sometimes compared to, were from a heroin overdose, a burst appendix and a tractor accident, according to a Washington Post story at the time