BONNAROO 2012: One festival attendee dies; one allegedly shot

Posted on Tuesday, June 12, 2012 at 4:11 pm

Another Bonnaroo has wrapped up and the festival goers have left the area.

This year there was one individual who died while attending the annual event. According to Coffee County Sheriff Steve Graves, Zachary Shuck died Thursday at a Nashville hospital after being flown there after suffering problems at Bonnaroo. Shuck was transported from the festival to the medical tents where he was treated and then placed in a waiting helicopter and flown to Vanderbilt University Medical Center where he later died.

“We will have to wait on the Metro Medical Examiner to conduct an autopsy to determine the cause of death,” Sheriff Graves said Tuesday morning. “They will notify us when the autopsy is to be performed and we will go from there.” The sheriff said that once that autopsy is completed then the cause of death will be determined.

Investigators from the Coffee County Sheriff’s Department are investigating a shooting incident that occurred at Bonnaroo Sunday night. According to Graves, Crockett Burgess, 23, of North Collins St., Tullahoma, told officers that he was shot while attending the festival. According to Investigator Sgt. Danny Ferrell, Burgess was shot in the left leg just below the knee. He was flown to Vanderbilt Medical Center for treatment of his injuries. Burgess told deputies that he did not know who shot him or why.

Deputies were busy this year seizing drugs. Sunday afternoon Sgt Kelly Smith of the sheriff’s department seized 15 to 20 pounds of Rice Krispies that were laced with marijuana.

“We also seized LSD, cocaine, ecstasy, mushrooms, synthetic drugs and a lot of marijuana,”  Graves stated.

This year deputies also seized a lot of peanut butter.

“We found several jars crammed full of marijuana and mushrooms,” the sheriff stated.

Deputies found that some of the festival attendees would cram marijuana and hallucinogenic mushrooms in the peanut butter in hopes that drug-sniffing dogs would not detect the drugs.

“We had been seeing a lot of stuff on Bonnaroo chat sites about placing the drugs in the peanut butter,” the sheriff said. He admitted that some jars did get by officers.

According to the sheriff there were at least 410 citations issued by local law enforcement and over 40 arrests made during the four days people were here for Bonnaroo. The sheriff stated that the arrests were about the same as last year but there were more citations issued than last year. The 100 state troopers who were in Manchester for the festival wrote a number of tickets as well. A number of citations written by THP was not released by the department of safety at press time.

Wayne Thomas may be reached by email at tnrept04@lcs.net. 

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