Summer festival fizzles after fracas and accusations

HERITAGE Day music festival organisers have come under fire after the event turned into a brawl that resulted in about a dozen people being injured.

On Saturday evening, the Sounds Like Summer festival at a park in Melrose, Joburg, was abruptly cancelled midway after a fight broke out.

Many people were taken to hospital, including a security guard who was stabbed in the back of the head.

The brawl brought the fes- tival to a grinding halt, meaning the headliner, DJ Black Coffee, didn’t perform.

However, party-goers have made many accusations on social media about security officers of Olympus Protection Services for allegedly starting the fight. The security company and organisers are denying the allegations.

According to a Sounds of Summer statement on the event’s Facebook wall, the fight was caused by a “group of people who are notorious for causing trouble at events and nightclubs”.

The organisers said the troublemakers refused to leave, and one man smashed a bottle and stabbed a security officer in the back of the head.

When security officers tried to disarm the man, the fight intensified and many people were injured.

However, witnesses who recorded the incident are claiming that security threw the first punches, kicking a man who had been choked into unconsciousness.

The blog post that detailed the incident also claims that a woman was punched for trying to intervene, and that officers were brutal in their response.

As the post was shared across social media, the organisers and security company were both blamed for the violence, with party-goers also calling for full refunds because Black Coffee didn’t play.

David Swartz, the lawyer of organiser Jason Saus, said yesterday there had yet to be a discussion on refunds, but it would be considered.

He defended the choice of security company, saying it had been a reliable service in the past.

He denied the allegations on social media that Saus had been directly involved in the brawl, saying his client had been far away from the violence, attending to the DJ table.

When asked about the deletion of dozens, if not hundreds, of Facebook posts complaining about the incident, Swartz said the organisers had deleted them to calm the situation down, as there were numerous false allegations.

“The organisers did everything they could (to stop the violence). Medics were at the scene, a certified security com- pany was there,” he said.

The owner of Olympus Protection Services, Chaz Fortnam, told The Star yesterday that while an investigation into the incident was under way, allegations that his company was not legally registered were “entirely untrue”.

The Star also determined the company was registered with the Companies and Intellectual Property Commission last year.

Fortnam declined to comment further until he had consulted the company’s lawyers.