A death at the annual Burning Man festival in northern Nevada is being investigated as a homicide after a man was found in a “pool of blood” shortly before the event came to a close.
Officials in Pershing County said in a statement that the man, who has not been publicly identified, was discovered Saturday evening. Burning Man is an annual weeklong gathering in the Black Rock Desert, located around 100 miles east of Reno, in which thousands of participants build a temporary city and engage in a variety of art, performance and other expressive projects. The event culminates in the burning of a large wooden man-shaped statue.
The deceased person was found “at approximately 9:14 p.m., while the ‘Man’ was beginning to burn,” the statement said. An attendee at the festival apparently “advised of a male subject lying in a pool of blood.”
“Pershing County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) Deputies and Bureau [of] Land Management (BLM) Rangers immediately responded to the campsite and found a single white adult male lying on the ground, obviously deceased,” the statement said. “PCSO Deputies, BLM Rangers and Burning Man Project Black Rock Rangers created a perimeter around the area, and PCSO and BLM began investigating the scene.”
