Woman suffers “serious head injury” after prop falls at Coachella Fest
A video posted to Twitter shows a balloon prop falling on a woman inside the Sahara Tent Sunday night during weekend two of the Coachella Music and Arts Festival.
A Cal Fire spokesperson told News Channel 3 the incident left a woman, identified by friends as Caroline, with a “serious head injury”.
News Channel 3’s Tom Tucker spoke with Kristin, a close friend of Caroline, Tuesday afternoon about the incident. She said Caroline, a 24-year-old from West Los Angeles, was in the back of the tent, dancing when the accident happened. Kristin said Caroline was unconscious for a “few minutes” and there a was “a lot of blood.”
Kristin described the incident as a “terrifying experience that never should have happened.”
Kristin said Caroline suffered a fractured skull and bleeding on the brain. She underwent brain surgery and is currently in the ICU in Palm Springs on seizure watch. Kristin added that Caroline is expected to deal with some “short term” effects, but in the long term, the prognosis is good.
Caroline’s family is asking for any witnesses who are willing to share information on the incident to email information and contact info to Newsline3@KESQ.com. We will forward the information to Caroline’s family.
News Channel 3 also contacted a witness, who posted footage of the accident on Twitter, with tweets describing what happened.
{“url”:”https://twitter.com/SHOWme_theGOODS/status/1120496461047914497″,”author_name”:”Scrambled Haigs”,”author_url”:”https://twitter.com/SHOWme_theGOODS”,”html”:”&#lt;blockquote class=”twitter-tweet”&#gt;&#lt;p lang=”en” dir=”ltr”&#gt;Here’s the video that Kyle got when the balloon fell on him and that girl…..you can hear everyone screaming for help as it’s laying on the floor and gets picked up by someone else. &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/Coachella2019?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#Coachella2019&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/SarahaTent?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#SarahaTent&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/PropAccident?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;#PropAccident&#lt;/a&#gt; &#lt;a href=”https://t.co/9bqRMU3B5z”&#gt;pic.twitter.com/9bqRMU3B5z&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/p&#gt;– Scrambled Haigs (@SHOWme_theGOODS) &#lt;a href=”https://twitter.com/SHOWme_theGOODS/status/1120496461047914497?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”&#gt;April 23, 2019&#lt;/a&#gt;&#lt;/blockquote&#gt;n&#lt;script async src=”https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js” charset=”utf-8″&#gt;&#lt;/script&#gt;n”,”width”:550,”height”:null,”type”:”rich”,”cache_age”:”3153600000″,”provider_name”:”Twitter”,”provider_url”:”https://twitter.com”,”version”:”1.0″}
In one tweet he wrote: “One of the white balloon props that hang from the tent got loose and plowed this chick into the ground that was standing right next to us….”.
The phone that captured the moment on video was knocked to the ground, and eventualy picked up. Then, the video went dark.
But, in the audio, the concert can be heard continuing, while people nearby call for “help” and call for a “medic”.
The camera did not capture images of the injured woman.
Derrick Haig, whose Twitter name is “Scrambled Haigs”, posted the footage Monday, along with tweets, describing the incident.
In one tweet he wrote “Busted her head straight open with blood everywhere. knocked kyle’s phone out his hand and cut the (expletive) out his hand…YO this was a gnarly (expletive) freak accident….i hope the best for that girl because it took a few minutes for security to reach her.”
News Channel 3 placed several phone calls, and sent a number of emails, attempting to get more details on what happened.
Concert promoter Goldenvoice is not returning our calls seeking comment. The Indio Police department has referred us to other agencies, who they say are handling the matter.
Indio City Manager Mark Scott told News Channel 3 the city does inspect structural installations at the festival. He added that he did tour the festival grounds Friday with the city’s head plan check engineer. Scott also said the Sahara Tent is not a venue used for Stagecoach.
Cal Fire, in an email response to the newsroom, referred to the incident as a “serious head injury”. Cal Fire also told us the ambulance company AMR handled the response.
AMR has not responded to our request for information.
The accident follows a death at the Empire Polo Grounds, which occurred before the first weekend of Coachella, when a Golden Voice employee fell from the roof of a stage, while they were setting up for the festival.
