Photo Credit: Electric Forest
The tiny Michigan village of Rothbury faces calls to suspend the Electric Forest after the body of a newborn baby was discovered on festival grounds.
Officials in the village of Rothbury, Michigan, are facing pressure from hundreds of citizens around the state to suspend the Electric Forest music festival following the discovery of the body of a newborn baby on festival grounds. The investigation into the infant’s death remains ongoing.
Village President Mike Harris said in a statement at a council meeting that the council would not discuss or take action against the festival and its organizers.
“It would be premature to draw conclusions, engage in speculation, or take action before all of the facts are known, and we will not do so,” said Harris. “We understand that this is deeply frustrating for many in our community, and we do not take this frustration lightly.”
The body was discovered on June 28 in a portable bathroom in the camping area on the final day of the four-day festival in the Village of Rothbury. Michigan State Police are investigating the death and have confirmed that preliminary autopsy findings showed the baby was born alive and “viable.” The FBI is offering a reward of up to $15,000 for information leading to the arrest and conviction of the responsible parties.
This year’s Electric Forest has been the subject of controversy for many reasons, including the suicide of an Illinois man who attended the festival. As a result, numerous public calls have been made for the village council to suspend the festival organizer’s permit.
A former Rothbury resident presented a petition with 1,500 signatures to revoke the festival’s permit until organizers can meet certain conditions. These include granting the county sheriff primary authority over festival security, eliminating private security, conducting vehicle searches for illicit drugs, and requiring the festival to reimburse the sheriff’s office for all law enforcement services. Mike Lewis, who headed the petition, also called for more transparency in reporting the numbers of deaths, sexual assaults, and overdoses at the festival.
Other locals have blamed the increase in unsafe incidents on failures at global entertainment company AEG, by which Electric Forest is presented. But some members of the community say that the calls to suspend the festival are unnecessary, asserting that its production these days makes it “a lot better” than it used to be across its 14-year history.
The rural village of Rothbury boasts a population of less than 500. Each year, tens of thousands of people from across the country visit the community for the festival, which has an economic impact of $60 to $65 million, according to Oceana County documentation.