The families of two women who were shot to death last summer at an outdoor music festival in the Columbia Gorge have sued the event organizer and security contractors, claiming the companies should have been able to prevent the killings.
Live Nation, the primary defendant in the King County, Washington, wrongful-death lawsuit, failed to enforce its own policies prohibiting guns and illegal drugs at the venue and didn’t take action when U.S. Army Spc. James Kelly started to behave erratically, the lawsuit claims. Kelly, who told police he had taken a dose of hallucinogenic mushrooms at the festival on June 17, 2023, allegedly shot and killed concertgoers Brandy Escamilla and Josilyn Ruiz that evening.
“Live Nation has the means and the duty to make sure security is the highest priority for their concert patrons,” the two families said in a statement. “Never should someone’s life be taken so senselessly and tragically at a music event.”
Representatives for Live Nation did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
After taking the mushrooms at the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival, Kelly began to hallucinate and told his girlfriend, “this is the end,” according to court records. He went back to their campsite and pulled a gun out of his pickup truck, loaded it, and fired at Escamilla, 29, and Ruiz, 26, who both happened to be passing by. The two women were engaged to be married. They had traveled to the festival from Seattle.
Kelly fired at other people, including his girlfriend. He was shot by a Moses Lake police detective working undercover at the festival. Kelly faces two first-degree murder charges and three first-degree assault charges in Grant County, and his trial is set to begin Aug. 7, according to the Grant County Clerk.
The lawsuit alleges that despite years of warnings that its events were vulnerable to shootings, Live Nation failed to put in place reasonable security measures, such as gun-sniffing dogs, to enforce its own rules.
The suit also claims that Kelly had displayed erratic and violent behavior before the shooting itself and should have been stopped, but wasn’t. The details of that conduct will come out during the discovery phase of the lawsuit, said Spencer Lucas, one of the lawyers with the Los Angeles-based firm Panish Shae Ravipudi LLP, representing the families.
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