The Electric Daisy Carnival (EDC) 2012 that took place in Las Vegas last weekend was chaotic. Despite the number of authorities, police, and paramedics present to keep the crowd under control and attend to partygoers’ needs, a few casualties and at least two deaths have been reported.
But this wasn’t new to phenomenal Insomniac Events-presented EDC events. In 2010, the festival was held at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum. That year, an overdose of Ecstasy claimed a 15-year-old girl’s life. Because of the death, the carnival was moved to the Las Vegas Motor Speedway in 2011.
It has only been two years into the venue change and one again, the repercussions of a giant party befalls EDC.
First, it was a 31-year-old Florida man who was hit by a truck driven by a 61-year-old woman. He was crossing the Las Vegas boulevard after a few hard hours of partying and drinking when he was struck. He succumbed to his injuries at the University Medical Center.
Emily McCaughan is the other name behind one of the two deaths reported this year. She was a 22-year-old pre-med student at the University of Arizona who fell from the 27th floor of her Circus Circus hotel room to her death on the last night of the three-day EDC. She was believed to have taken MDMA (aka Ecstasy, a stimulant drug with hallucinogenic properties) and had paranoid delusions after, believing that a man was stalking her.
She left the festival early when her friends (who had all been taking drugs) failed to console her and calm her down. Upon arriving at the hotel room, she began sending distressed-sounding Facebook messages to her friends at the festival ranting about her paranoia and begging them for help. By the time her friends returned to the hotel, she was gone.
The hotel security initiated a search and found her body.
Lessons? Party hard but party safe, peeps. Drink responsibly. Don’t do drugs.
