Background: Tents are set up across the playa in the Nevada desert for the annual Burning Man festival (YouTube/Burning Man Project). Inset: The “Burning Man” statue (YouTube/Burning Man Project).
A death at the annual Burning Man festival in northern Nevada is being investigated as a homicide after a man was found in a “pool of blood” shortly before the event came to a close.
Officials in Pershing County said in a statement that the man, who has not been publicly identified, was discovered Saturday evening. Burning Man is an annual weeklong gathering in the Black Rock Desert, located around 100 miles east of Reno, in which thousands of participants build a temporary city and engage in a variety of art, performance and other expressive projects. The event culminates in the burning of a large wooden man-shaped statue.
The deceased person was found “at approximately 9:14 p.m., while the “Man’ was beginning to burn,” the statement said. An attendee at the festival apparently “advised of a male subject lying in a pool of blood.”
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“Pershing County Sheriff’s Office (PCSO) Deputies and Bureau [of] Land Management (BLM) Rangers immediately responded to the campsite and found a single white adult male lying on the ground, obviously deceased,” the statement said. “PCSO Deputies, BLM Rangers and Burning Man Project Black Rock Rangers created a perimeter around the area, and PCSO and BLM began investigating the scene.”
Festival organizers say they are working with investigators to uncover what happened.
“Burning Man is cooperating with law enforcement,” a statement from Burning Man officials said on Sunday. “The investigation is ongoing and the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office will be the primary source of further information. If you are in Black Rock City, do not interfere with law enforcement activity.”
Since the creation of Burning Man in 1986, a number of deaths have occurred at the festival. Last year, a woman was found on the first day after dying from an asthma attack in her sleep, and in 2023 a man is believed to have died from apparent drug intoxication, the Reno Gazette Journal reported. In 2018, a man died after running into the Burning Man structure fire, and in 2014, a woman was fatally struck by an art car at the event.
Saturday’s death appears to be the first time a fatality at the festival has been investigated as a homicide.
