Reports have surfaced that a young attendee of Miami’s troubled Ultra Music Festival has died under unknown circumstances. Adonis Escoto, 21, was found dead on Saturday night in a car parked near the festival site. He and his friends had been attending Ultra since Friday night.
According to the Miami New Times, Escoto, a local resident of Miami, began to feel sick while attending the festival on Saturday. His friends say they took him to the car to recover and then re-entered the festival. When they returned several hours later, they found him dead.
“We have no idea what happened,” says his aunt Rosa Escoto. “He didn’t take drugs. We think maybe someone put something in his drink without him knowing.” Officials have said it is still unknown how he died. “We are still looking into that,” Miami Police Chief Manuel Orosa said at a press conference. “The autopsy is yet to be completed and the toxicology will take probably a few months.”
Miami city officials are now calling for the end to the electronic music festival after a 28-year-old security guard Erica Mack was almost trampled to death on Friday night while trying to stop a group of gate crashers who stormed a fence to get inside. She was hospitalised with severe brain haemorrhaging and a broken leg.
Police reported a total of of 84 arrests at the weekend’s three-day event, which went from Friday to Sunday. 33 of those arrests were felonies and 50 were misdemeanours. No arrests have yet been made in relation to the trampling incident, however Police Chief Orosa suggested that Ultra organisers could face criminal charges, claiming they had ignored his department’s warnings about a weak spot in the event’s fence.
In 2013, a 20-year-old Ultra attendee died of a drug overdose, while a 23-year-old nearly died after accidentally drinking water spiked with anti-freeze. “With the drug use and the noise, I have to say that Ultra has overstepped its welcome,” Miami Mayor Tomás Regalado said.
