A good friend of mine told me that I should write down everything I saw the day of the SXSW tragedy because it would help me repress it. After having some time to reflect these past few days, I feel ready to spill these words in order to try and get the images out of my mind.
No one prepares you for it. One moment, you're tending to your duties as a volunteer and the next you're surrounded by motionless bodies lying in blood spread across the cold street.
Wednesday, March 12, 2014. It was my second day volunteering at The Mohawk as part of my work with SXSW. My job? Stage Crew, which pretty much consisted of helping musicians load and unload equipment. I was scheduled Tuesday through Saturday with 6 p.m.-2 a.m. shifts.
I was particularly excited to work that day because Tyler, the Creator, would be performing at one in the morning. Outside the venue, lines had already started forming when I arrived for my shift. I sensed it would be a busy night.
At around 11:40 p.m., I took a break to go get something to eat. I walked a few blocks up Red River St. to a food truck, bought a slice of pizza, and sat down for about 30 minutes. I checked Twitter and saw that Tyler had posted a tweet that said The Mohawk would let him bring 100 fans in for the show and encouraged them to be outside at 12:30 a.m.
I knew this would cause chaos outside the venue, so I headed back at around 12:10 a.m. From the distance, I could see the crowd had built up outside the venue. My plan was to help outside, so I went inside the venue to make sure it was okay with my stage manager. "Hey Ernie, I know Tyler is getting here soon so if you don't need me here, I'll be outside seeing if they need help." "Yeah, that's fine. Go ahead." And with that, I walked out of the venue again.
