Free Daily Headlines

News

Set your text size: A A A

Coroner issues cause of death in festival fatality

The 35-year-old man who was found in a pond at a Mills River festival last summer died of injuries to his head and neck likely caused by a dive into shallow water, the state medical examiner and a sheriff’s official said.

The medical examiner, in a report obtained by the Hendersonville Lightning through a public records request, said Jay Houston Marx, of Tryon, died of “blunt force injuries of head and neck.” The medical examiner ruled the death accidental.
Marx “was attending an outdoor music festival notorious for involving alcohol and drug use,” the coroner said. “He was last seen alive late night July 18 by his girlfriend. He was found dead in (a) pond” at 2 p.m. the next day.
“There’s nothing really suspicious about this,” said sheriff’s Maj. Frank Stout said. “It appears that they found him floating in the lake up there and his injuries are consistent with diving off the platform or the boat and hitting the bottom of the shallow pond. We have found noting to indicate anything different.”
The Transformus festival had rented the Deerfields property on the western end of South Mills River Road for the four-day festival. Brothers Gregory and John J. Redden rent the 890-acre property for festivals, weddings and other events under lease agreements that obligate the renters to provide security, emergency services, garbage collection and other management of the site, their attorney said when the Henderson County Planning Department was discussing festival permits last month.
The county planning staff and the sheriff’s office are working on a rewrite of the county zoning code to require more stringent permitting for festivals, including those held at Deerfields and at Oskar Blues REEB bicycle and camping retreat on Crab Creek Road. On the same weekend last July, Marx was found dead at Deerfields and Oskar Blues’ “Burning Can” craft beer festival had alcohol permitting issues and traffic problems. The sheriff’s office said it was stretched thin responding to two festivals on the same weekend drawing thousands of people.
“We’re just looking for consistency in the permitting process (to ensure) that every venue would have to have some type of security and emergency operations, a plan for emergency services and rescue if something did happen,” Stout said. “With the amount of venues that are in and around Henderson County we are just looking in each venue to have somewhat of a standard plan of operation and a plan of contact so we know what’s going on before these events happen.”
During the Planning Board meeting last month, Bill Alexander, the Reddens’ attorney, said his clients require emergency medical support and traffic control for all festivals that use the property. Alexander declined to comment on the autopsy report’s characterization of the alcohol and drug use. The Reddens could not be reached by press time.
Dutch Owen of Sylva, the president of Transformus LLC, told the Planning Board that his organization had run the events responsibly and wanted to continue using the Mills River land for its annual festival.