DEATHS AT BONNAROO WERE FIRST

Heat, drugs fatal mix at music festival

MANCHESTER, Tenn. - Given a crowd estimated at more than 150,000, plenty of
illegal drug use and stifling heat, a sheriff said Monday that it was lucky
that only two fans died at this year's Bonnaroo music festival.

"When there is drug usage and the heat has been like it has, we have been
expecting it every year. ... This year our luck ran out," Coffee County
Sheriff Steve Graves said. Preliminary toxicology tests indicated both
victims had been using drugs.

The deaths were the first in Bonnaroo's three-year history. The festival ran
Friday through Sunday at a farm halfway between Nashville and Chattanooga
and offered a diverse lineup that included Bob Dylan, Dave Matthews and
friends and The Dead.

Amber Lynn Stevens of Flatwoods, Ky., died Saturday. Her 24th birthday would
have been Monday.

"We know that preliminary toxicology showed a presence of four different
drugs," Graves said. "There was cocaine and marijuana and two other drugs."

Graves said the woman's body was sent to the medical examiner in Nashville
for an autopsy.

Brandon Taylor, 20, of Lowell, Mich., died Friday. Details of his
preliminary toxicology test, including the kind of drugs he had been using,
were not immediately available.

"It appears to be drug-related," investigator Dale Brissey said. "He was
with his mother and stepfather."

Weather reports put the highs at 90 degrees or more on Friday and Saturday
and the heat index, a measure of how hot it feels, was above 100 degrees.

Graves said there were hundreds of drug arrests and some assault charges
among the festival attendees. He said there was less violence than last
year, when there were stabbings in a crowd that organizers said totaled
about 80,000 people.

This year, organizers estimated the crowed at 90,000, a figure that Graves
said represents "what their permit was for."

"We think it is possibly double that, from pilots' estimates," Graves said.
Monday's traffic jam along Interstate 24 as the crowd departed also pointed
to higher attendance than organizers said.

"We have no way of counting them," Graves said. "They print their own
tickets so I don't really know."

Festival spokesman Rick Farman earlier expressed sympathy for the families.

"It's obviously a very very sad event. Obviously we never want to see
anything like that happen," he said Sunday.

Graves said officers handed out citations for possession of small quantities
of illegal drugs but didn't take in the violators.

"Our jail is too small to put that many in there at one time." he said.