A 15-year-old fan was severely injured during a Destroy Lonely set at the Beach, Please hip-hop festival in Romania on July 11th after being encouraged by the rapper to stage dive.
The Romanian news outlet Observator visited the injured fan — who is only identified by his first name, Nicolas — in the hospital to hear how the incident transpired. Nicolas had attended the Beach, Please festival with his mother. The event also featured performances from A$AP Rocky, Young Thug, 21 Savage, Lil Baby, and fellow Opium label artist Ken Carson.
Destroy Lonely, one of the primary artists in the “rage rap” scene alongside Playboy Carti and Carson, is known for his rowdy, mosh-heavy, high-energy live shows. Nicolas explained that during the set, he wanted to join Lonely and was eventually pulled up onstage with the rapper. The two shared a brief moment singing and dancing together, but after about a minute—as seen in a video of the performance—Lonely turns to Nicolas and says: “I need you to jump right back in there with your friends! You ready?” Nicolas, however, alleges that he did not want to jump.
Another graphic video shot from a different angle shows the incident, with Nicolas hesitating significantly and trying to explain to the rapper that he didn’t want to jump; Lonely, however, continues pushing Nicolas to the edge of the stage. When Nicolas does jump from the rather tall stage, he doesn’t clear the barricade, instead landing straight on the barricade and immediately wincing in pain.
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The fall was over 10 feet high. “When I fell, I thought I was dying,” Nicolas said to The Observator. “I had no more air, I ran out of air. I thought if I didn’t get help here, these would be my last moments.”
Observator notes that the concert continued as usual, while Nicolas was given first aid treatment at the festival and taken to the ICU at Constanţa County Hospital. The outlet claims he suffered a pulmonary contusion and lesions on the liver and one of his kidneys, and will need several weeks of recovery. His mother also claims he suffered wounds on his legs and pain in his shoulder.
“We stand with the young man who suffered an injury last night, during a spontaneous moment spent on stage,” said Beach, Please co-founder and popular YouTuber Andrei Şelaru per the Romanian news outlet Adevarul via Google Translate. “We believe that the incident was caused by an irresponsible attitude of the artist who invited him on stage and urged him to jump. That is why, as of today, we have a new rule at the festival: no participant has access to the stage, even if invited by the artist.”
Onstage crowd mishaps have become more commonplace than ever in recent years, with the barriers between artists and performers eroding in notable ways. Last week, a Don Toliver show in Calgary resulted in a stampede, and on another occasion, Cardi B was forced to defend herself onstage in Las Vegas after a fan hurled a drink at her. A new Astroworld documentary digs into the nature of these issues, highlighting the safety issues that led to the Astroworld tragedy in 2021.
Content shared from consequence.net.