Tampa Bay’s Mayor Bob Buckhorn emerged Wednesday to offer an official statement in the wake of the two deaths and 57 hospitalizations at this weekend’s Sunset Music Festival. The 30,000-attendee event saw 25 charged with felonies, exhausting the manpower and resources of the city’s police and fire departments, officials said.
In his statement, Mayor Buckhorn said that if it were up to him, the music festival would not take place in Tampa Bay the following year.
“The [Tampa] Sports Authority, they need to look at whether that is an appropriate type of event for this community to host. . . The types of drugs that tend to be associated with those electronic dance music festivals obviously catastrophic results for people who make bad decisions.”
An ER nurse at St. Joe’s, which received 40 of the 57 patients, said that she saw “back-to-back dehydrated children, all on Molly.”
Mayor Buckhorn has ordered that the police and fire departments put together reports on what happened during the weekend event. The Tampa Bay Sports Authority is expected to release a statement of their own this afternoon.
“You can’t necessarily assign blame, but clearly it is not an environment conducive to positive things happening. . .” – Mayor Buckhorn
Source: Fox13 | Image via Sunset Music Festival
