Death at Rainbow Serpent Festival

The 2012 edition of Rainbow Serpent Festival wound up on Monday 30 January, and as ever the reports on the inthemix forum are full of praise for the event and its organisation. The festival’s Facebook page is also filled with similar sentiments.

However, this year’s event also comes with a sad note, following the death of 34-year-old festivalgoer Daniel Buccianti in the early hours of Sunday morning.

According a report in The Age newspaper, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said the man’s death was not believed to be suspicious. The Age also states that Buccianti called his mother from the festival to say: ‘’Mum, I have taken some very bad acid and everything is very odd here.’’ After asking his mother to pick him up, he called again later to say he was okay. ‘’Around 1.30am, the man was deceased when we arrived,’’ a Rural Ambulance spokeswoman said. There is however no indication that acid was the cause of death. The Age reports Ms Buccianti has called for the festival to be shut down, saying, “If the police didn’t find any drugs at the festival then they were not looking hard enough.”

According to several reports, a second man at Rainbow Serpent was also taken to Ballarat Base Hospital in a serious condition on Saturday night, after suffering a cardiac arrest in connection with a drug overdose.