The Okeechobee Music and Arts Festival is a four-day music and arts festival held at the 600-acre Sunshine Grove property in Okeechobee, Florida. The event occurred over the weekend and held much controversy as many on reddit claimed a death occurred while none of it was being immediately reported. Local news in Florida finally confirmed the unfortunate death early this week.
Over the weekend of the festival a reddit thread on Okeechobee began circulating that a drowning had occurred between the late Friday night (Mar 3rd) or early Saturday (Mar 4th) of the festival. However, at the time the news was mostly unverified reddit confirmations along with some first hand accounts on twitter:
The fact that I'm finding out through a Reddit post that one of my friends was dead in the water for HOURS through the night at @okeechobeefest despite people apparently calling for help and searching for him, only to be found in rigor mortis that morning is disgusting.
— Brick Jonas (@Nick_Eaux) March 6, 2023
It wasn’t until roughly the Monday and Tuesday after, that a few local news outlets confirmed the death and identified the victim as Steven Nguyen.
Reports confirm and identify Baton Rouge man who drowned at @okeechobeefest over the weekend. https://t.co/MeUsXmm2cd
— 6AM 🔜 3.11 Oscar Mulero, Dimi Angélis, & Etari (@6AMGroup) March 8, 2023
Many reddit threads pointed out at the fact that even though the death occurred early in the festival that it was not immediately reported nor did it seem to stop the the rest of the weekend. Claims were made that the same lake where the victim drowned was still given open access to all festival goers the entire weekend. According to the local news report that confirmed the victim’s identity (WBRZ.com), the festival continued on and the news site also pointed that Okeechobee twitter released a photo of people still partying on the late afternoon of Mar 4th.
It's an Aquachobee Beach party all weekend long!🏖☀️🌊#OMF23 pic.twitter.com/vuBWXZpvhX
— Okeechobee (@okeechobeefest) March 5, 2023
A Gofundme has been started for the victim.
