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Stilt performer injured at Electric Daisy Carnival

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EDC stilt performer Marco Landin was injured during an altercation at this year’s festival.

What seemed at the time like a smooth, safe weekend at the Speedway was something different for EDC stilt performer Marco Landin, who says he was physically assaulted while working on opening night of the massive music festival.

Landin was one of a handful of Dragon Knights stilt performers hired by Electric Daisy Carnival organizers to walk around the Las Vegas Motor Speedway on Friday night, when he says he was attacked by a festivalgoer. The performer and his troupe were at the 7UP stage around 12:15 a.m. Saturday morning when a man began punching the “puppets” attached to the stilt performers, Landin says, adding that the stilts make him approximately 9-feet tall when he's wearing them.

“One of our ground security people, assigned by Insomniac Events, told him, ‘Hey you need to stop,’ at which point the guy turns around and says, ‘What you want a fight? I’m looking for a fight.’ This was the report my troupe gave me,” Landin says. “The security guard tells him ‘You need to leave,’ at which point the assailant pretends to leave, circles around behind me, grabs both of my stilts, lifted me into the air and then dead dropped me to the floor. There was nothing I could do to defend myself … I felt my bones snap inside my wrists and arms, and then my head hit the floor.”

Both of Landin’s arms were broken and he suffered a minor concussion. The alleged assailant has not been identified.

Landin says he momentarily passed out, then was led to the side of the stage where security, his colleagues and other festivalgoers assisted in removing his costume, which had at least a 10-foot wingspan.

Landin was taken to the EDC medical tent, which he says “was overflowing with people.” The performer was treated for pain and taken to UMC in an ambulance sometime around 1:20 a.m.

Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department spokesman Michael Rodriguez said the report was filed “at the hospital [in the] early morning hours of the 18th and it has been forwarded to detectives for review.” Detectives are currently are in the process of seeing if any footage from the event is available, he said.

Landin's friends have set up a GoFundMe account to help pay for his medical costs and for the time Landin will be out of work, which could be months.

“At this point in the game, it is unclear how much of my medical bills will be taken care of by the company that hired me … they’ll take care of me as much as they can, but I don’t know much is going to be taken care of. [The rest] is lost income for the rest of the year,” Landin says.

Dragon Knights is a company based out of San Diego. Landin has 20 years of experience as a stilt performer and has worked all but two of the past 10 EDCs, he says.

“Never in my career have I seen this amount of aggression toward a professional performer of any kind,” he says. “There’s been such an expression of outrage and support that it really melts my heart. It just turns your feelings all around and made me realize just how wonderful it is to be a member of this kind of community.”

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