Aaaand this is why we can’t have nice things. Last night at Dominion Riverrock, an annual weekend-long music festival that takes place on Brown’s Island, Richmond was lucky enough to witness a headlining set by reggae pioneers Toots And The Maytals–or, well, most of one.
Aaaand this is why we can’t have nice things. Last night at Dominion Riverrock, an annual weekend-long music festival that takes place on Brown’s Island, Richmond was lucky enough to witness a headlining set by reggae pioneers Toots And The Maytals–or, well, most of one. Fifteen minutes before the set was supposed to end, a 19 year old man (whose name has not been released yet–lucky for him) threw a glass vodka bottle at the stage with such force that it cut open singer Toots Hibbert’s forehead. The band immediately stopped playing, Toots was taken to the hospital, and the crowd was told to disperse. Angry audience members in the immediate area of the bottle-thrower immediately yielded him up to the police, and he was arrested and charged with aggravated assault.
There are a lot of reasons why this shouldn’t have happened. For one thing, glass bottles are not allowed into Dominion Riverrock, and security checks bags thoroughly to make sure no one is sneaking any in. For another, the bottle thrower was 19, and therefore too young to be in lawful possession of a vodka bottle anyway. Concert authorities are trying to get to the bottom of what happened. Venture Richmond’s executive director, Jack Berry, told the Times-Dispatch that the miscreant in question may have stolen a bottle from a vendor–but of course vendors keep a pretty close watch on their stock, so even this would have taken some doing. This raises a lot of questions–most prominently, of course, the question of why in the world someone would think it was ever a good idea to throw a bottle at a performer.
One thing we do know for sure is that this guy was more like the proverbial bad apple that spoils an entire bunch than an accurate representative of the crowd as a whole. Attendees were furious at the poor treatment of the singer, and many took to facebook, twitter, and other social networking sites to express their outrage. Thankfully, festival manager Steve Lecky told the Times-Dispatch that Toots Hibbert did not hold the incident against Richmond as a whole, saying that he’d like to come back to Richmond in the future. Apparently the singer was not seriously injured; he was treated at VCU Medical Center and released around 1 AM, only a few hours after the incident occurred. Hibbert is scheduled to begin an acoustic tour in New York today. Dominion Riverrock’s final day of activities will go on today as scheduled–hopefully without further incident.
