A young concert-goer has been paralyzed after the singer from one of her favorite bands stage dived and landed on top of her head.
24-year-old Bird Piché attended the Australian punk rock band Trophy Eyes’ concert in Buffalo, New York. During the first song of the band’s set, lead singer John Floreani jumped into the crowd as a stage dive in an attempt to crowd surf. In videos posted to social media, you can see Bird’s pink hair before she is thrown to the ground.
The show was stopped and she was immediately taken to the hospital via ambulance. Doctors confirmed that she suffered a catastrophic spinal cord injury and has already underwent extensive surgery.
“The video is wild because unless you knew that someone was hurt in the video, you’d never expect that. Like it’s just an average stage dive. The video that I saw on Facebook and then another angle surfaced on a Reddit thread, both of them just seem fairly innocuous,” a friend of the family Wolter Tejera told WGRZ of the petrifying moment.
“He stage dove into the crowd, and there must just not have been enough people around there to catch him, or they weren’t aware that he was going to jump. And that was kind of it from then,” Wolter clarified.
Watch the stage dive, below.
According to the news report, Bird is now in a regular hospital room and is able to breathe on her own. She currently can use her arms and is able to communicate via text. Bird is a talented artist as a photographer and painter. She attends Fredonia University and works for Planned Parenthood.
Bird’s family friend created a GoFundMe to help with her medical expenses. The donations have reached over $50,000. The page stated that she has a “long recovery ahead and will need all the help she can get.” They noted that it is “still too early to know what her prognosis is,” though she is being sent to a rehab facility after she is released from the hospital and cannot work.
Trophy Eyes donated $5,000 to the fundraiser. They released a statement to their social media accounts about the tragic accident. They shared that the event has “shaken us all to our core” and are in contact with Bird’s family.
“Out of respect for the family, we have refrained from speaking about this publicly so far, but with the blessing of their family we are now able to say how truly heartbroken we are to be here now,” the band wrote. “Our friend, Bird, is now in recovery but still has a long road ahead for them.”
The band has received mixed reactions on social media to the accident, as according to onlookers, the band did not warn the crowd that they were going to stage dive. Additionally, a bartender at the music venue told local news station WKBW that the venue has a strict “no crowd surfing policy.”
“There are signs posted everywhere in the venue and notice was included in the emails for this show with the show’s promoter and the band themselves,” Mohawk Place’s general manager Mike Thor told the news station.
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Gallery Credit: Erica Russell