Lil Wayne hosted his fifth annual music festival, Lil Weezyana Fest, in his hometown of New Orleans this past Saturday at UNO Lakefront Arena. Despite the stacked lineup of Wayne, Travis Scott, Meek Mill, Megan Thee Stallion and more, the festival suffered some complications. The real mess occurred when around 9 in the evening, after Meek's set, there was a shooting scare. Police later determined that it was merely a false alarm.
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Keith Spera, a music and culture reporter for The Times-Picayune and The New Orleans Advocate documented the ensuing panic on his Twitter account. He first reported the incident at 8:47 PM, claiming "a small crowd near the Ferris wheel food trucks freaked out & ran." He then shared details and photos of attendees who stormed barricades, broke property and looted abandoned concessions stands for free booze. The stolen beverages made sense considering New Orleans hit a high of 37°C yesterday - which turned into thick humidity in the evening - and people reported on Twitter that the festival had run out of their $4 water bottles at one point. A few were reported to have fallen unconscious due to the unbearable heat. Both the VIP and GA sections of the 15,000-person festival were apparently aggressive and jam-packed. Meek Mill even tried to tame the crowd during his performance, saying, "I need everybody to be cool. No pushing or we're gonna shut this s--- down."
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Although Spera mentioned a "small crowd", others on Twitter insisted that the stampede was rather vast and intense. One user wrote, "don’t let news reports tell y’all the lil weezyana fest shooting situation was a small stampede and all. It was MAJOR. The whole venue was stampeding and breaking down fences. One of the scariest moments of my life." Those injured in this chaos were treated on-site at the medical tents.
Read some more testimonies from the event below.
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