Yesterday, the final day of the Electric Zoo festival was cancelled at Randall's Island Park after two people passed away and another four were hospitalized in drug-related incidents. Twenty-three year-old Jeffrey Russ and 20-year-old Olivia Rotondo died Saturday after allegedly ingesting MDMA ("molly").
To make matters much worse, 31 people were arrested and a 16-year-old girl awoke beneath a van in a parking lot on Friday with her pants unbuttoned and her legs covered in bruises and scratches, the victim of an apparent sexual assault.
The girl was taken to New York-Presbyterian Hospital Weill Cornell where doctors decided that she was sexually assaulted. The NYPD is still investigating the incident. Over the next two days, arrests piled up for disorderly conduct, resisting arrest, drug sales and possession of controlled substances.
Festival attendees told the New York Daily News that security at the festival was lax. “Not once was I asked to open it, and not once was I patted down,” 23-year-old Andrew Edvin said of the bag he carried with him. “The security and staff along the entrance route did nothing to prevent drugs from being brought in.”
One city employee called the happenings at the festival "ridiculous," adding that there's "drug use and under-age activity that goes on [at the festival] every year." The worker told A Walk in the Park that events like Electric Zoo "have to go" because they're a health risk to the public.
[via Gothamist andNew York Daily News]
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