A concertgoer was electrocuted to death after scaling the stage and touching power cables at a music festival in Brazil.
Daniel Guedes, 32, died instantly in the massive electrical explosion during the show in Natuba, Paraiba state. Images too gruesome to publish show the man’s charred body lying beside the stage shortly after the accident.
There was a blinding flash of light the moment Guedes, who was reported to be drunk, touched the electrical wire.The concert, held April 29, had been going on for 30 minutes when he scaled the scaffolding and began walking across the top of the stage.
He went unnoticed for around a minute before terrified revelers began pointing and screaming.
Singer Raniery Gomes told his band to stop playing as he tried to coax the man back down.
“Get down from there man,” Gomes said into the microphone. “My brother be careful.”
He then called out to security: “Hey guys, there’s a man on top of here.”
“Everyone’s going crazy with fear because he’s up there on top of the stage. Somebody please come and get him down from there.”
But Guedes, who was stepping over wires barefoot, appeared oblivious to the danger he was in.
He sat down for a while, his feet straddling over the rig, before again clambering clumsily across the apparatus.
As he moved towards two wires, his back appeared to touch the high voltage cables, sparking a massive explosion.
Sparks flew and a burst of a bright white light accompanied by grisly buzzing and fizzing noises signaled the man’s demise.
The audience screamed in horror as the lights went out and white smoke billowed above the stage.
One traumatized concertgoer said: “It was the most horrifying and scary thing to watch because we knew it was going to end in disaster. Goodness knows how he managed to get up there without anyone seeing.”
The incident happened during the first performance of the last night of a local music festival known as the Festa da Uva.
In a statement, the local authority responsible for the event stressed all security procedures had been in place on the night — and offered its condolences to the victim’s family.
It said: “The festival’s organizing committee laments the accident and has offered its support to the family. This place where the festival is held, Praça Pública, has always been used for this type of event and there have never been any problems of this nature before.”
“We adopted all security measures and we regard this fatality as an isolated incident.”
[New York Post | Janet Tappin Coelho, The Sun – link to the original article]
[Video: Jim Hutchison/FocusOn News]
