24-year-old dies overnight at Electric Daisy Carnival
A 24-year-old man died at the Electric Daisy Carnival overnight Saturday, police say.
Of 408 medical calls reported from day two of the three-day carnival, seven people were transported to area hospitals and one person died just before 4 a.m., Metro wrote in a statistical summary Sunday morning.
The report shows 35 arrests were made between 6 p.m. Saturday and 6 a.m. Sunday: 26 narcotics-related felony arrests; five misdemeanor arrests; and one arrest for driving under the influence.
“I’d hate to have another tragedy,” Clark County Fire Chief Jon Klassen told the Review-Journal.
The department is not directly responsible for medical care inside the venue at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway, but is on stand-by in parking and surrounding areas, Klassen said, “should there be something of significance.”
Any combination of drugs and/or alcohol and extreme temperatures can have devastating effects, Klassen warned. The carnival’s safety theme remains: “stay hydrated.”
The Clark County coroner’s office will release the identity of the deceased after their family has been notified. The cause and manner of death has not yet been determined, and toxicology tests take several weeks.
“We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of the man who passed away. The health and safety of our fans is Insomniac’s first priority and we take every measure to create a safe environment,” Insomniac Productions, festival organizers, said in a prepared statement. “While the cause of this tragedy will take some time to determine, we ask that you keep his loved ones in your thoughts and prayers. Tonight and every night, we ask all of our fans to take care of themselves and one another.”
Sunday’s attendees will face similar dangers from the extreme weather.
Though high temperatures peaked hours before each of the three EDC start times, conditions were hot enough for the National Weather Service to issue an excessive heat warning for the valley through the weekend.
Sunday’s high reached 109 degrees, meteorologist Dan Berc said, and had just cooled three degrees around 7 p.m. — the scheduled start of EDC Las Vegas’ last hurrah of 2015.
Conditions should still be in the mid 90s after midnight, Berc said. The official measurement for the valley comes from an official weather service station at McCarran International Airport, about 20 miles south of the speedway.
As the flood gates are released after the festival ends at 5:30 a.m., temperatures should be in the low 80s, Berc said, showing mercy to those waiting in the parking lot that Interstate 15 will inevitably become. In past years, commuters on the highway have encounter heavy traffic from attendees going back home.
Festival organizers estimated 135,000 people attended Saturday night’s carnival at the speedway, Metro’s release said.
Last year at least two people died as the second night of EDC came to a close. A third person was hospitalized after arriving in the valley and died several days later.
Anthony Anaya, 25, of Everett, Wash., died just before 11 p.m. on Saturday after attending the festival. Anaya was staying at the Vdara hotel on the Strip and died at Spring Valley Hospital Medical Center.
He died from a combination of alcohol, Ecstasy and cocaine intoxication, the coroner’s office said.
Montgomery Tsang, 24, of San Leandro, Calif., collapsed at the Las Vegas Motor Speedway while leaving the festival Saturday morning. He died at a hospital from an Ecstasy overdose.
Joey Saychack, 21, of Fresno Calif., was found unconscious by friends in a house they had rented to go to the weekend festival. He was taken to Spring Valley Hospital on June 20, 2014. Saycheck’s death on June 25, 2014 was the result of an overdose of cocaine, methamphetamine and alcohol, the coroner’s office said.
In 2014 there were 27 misdemeanor citations, 48 misdemeanor arrests and 73 felony narcotics arrests throughout the weekend, according to numbers provided by Las Vegas police. There were 794 medical calls, and 25 of those people had to be taken to hospitals.
Organizers moved the festival to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011 after a 15-year-old girl overdosed on the club drug Ecstasy and died in 2010 at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum.
In Las Vegas in 2012, a 22-year-old pre-med student at the University of Arizona, Emily McCaughan, experienced paranoid delusions after taking the club drug Ecstasy at EDC and died after she fell from her Strip hotel room’s window.
That same year, 31-year-old Olivier Hennessy, from Florida, was killed after being hit by a truck as he left the festival.
Review-Journal writer Ricardo Torres contributed to this story. Contact Kimberly De La Cruz at kdelacruz@reviewjournal.com or 702-383-0381. Find her on Twitter: @KimberlyinLV. Contact Wesley Juhl at wjuhl@reviewjournal.com and 702-383-0391. Find him on Twitter: @WesJuhl.
