A woman fears she has permanent eye damage after being assaulted at a music festival in central Queensland by another woman “looking for a fight.”
Riqui Vines, a Central Queensland University student, said she was punched and elbowed in the face by a younger woman on Saturday, October 15, while attending the Lost and Found Music Festival at the Rockhampton Showgrounds.
After colliding with her alleged attacker, the 26-year-old woman was knocked unconscious, suffered facial swelling, and sustained a serious eye injury.
“I went to the concert with my aunty; we went for a dance in the mosh pit at about 6.30 pm and gradually made our way to the front of the mosh,” Ms. Vines said.
“A couple of young girls cautioned me that this girl (the alleged attacker) was being aggressive towards them, but I was having too much fun to take much notice.
“I hit her back straight away to defend myself and then I told her to settle down because we were all there to have fun and we don’t want to get kicked out,” she said.
Ms. Vines thought the fight was over when the other woman appeared to calm down and everyone continued to dance, but things took a turn for the worse when Australian rapper Masked Wolf took the stage, with a large number of people entering the mosh pit and pushing towards the front.
“I was pushed into this girl and out of the blue, she just elbowed me in the eye,” Ms. Vines said.
“I fell back into other people and everything was a daze from there; she had concussed me, I didn’t know what had happened.
“I was trying to get back up because it looked like she was going to go to me again, but I couldn’t stand.
“My aunt saw her going for me and grabbed her and she punched my aunty in the forehead, then my aunty got her to the ground and she crawled out of the mosh pit,” she said.
“I couldn’t walk, I could barely move, my eyes were rolling back in my head and I was falling in and out of consciousness,” Ms. Vines remembered.
“I ended up being taken to the Rockhampton Hospital in an ambulance and they wheeled me in. It was really busy, and I could barely walk, and wasn’t making any sense.
“The waiting room was packed and it had been about two hours since I was hit and I remember all the pain starting to hit me. I was in agony and crying out in the waiting room.”
“It’s not usually the type of festival I would attend; I prefer Australian and indie rock bands; the only reason we went was that my aunty got free tickets.
“I have been to a lot of festivals before and if people were being too rough in the crowd, they always stop the show and ask people to calm down, but nobody stopped this.
“It was too chaotic, too aggressive and while there was security there, it felt like the festival goers were left to sort it out themselves in the crowd.”
“Most people said she’s notorious for this kind of behavior, so I took the new information to the police station,” Ms. Vines confirmed.
“I’d like to see her behind bars. It was a completely unprovoked attack and I never had the chance to defend myself,” Ms. Vines enforced.
Although police investigations are ongoing, no one has been charged in connection with the incident in Queensland.
