A local woman was severely injured last week at a concert in downtown Buffalo after a member of the band who was attempting to surf the crowd leaped from the stage and struck her.
Bird Piché suffered a “catastrophic” spinal injury Tuesday at Buffalo’s Mohawk Place while she attended a concert by the Australian band Trophy Eyes, according to a GoFundMe page set up to raise money for her medical treatment. WKBW-TV was first to report on the incident.
The fundraising page, set up by two family friends, said Piché has undergone surgery but it’s too soon for a long-term prognosis.
“She has a long recovery ahead and will need all the help she can get,” according to her friends Stephanie Brown and Leo Wolters Tejera.
Mohawk Place has a strict policy barring crowd-surfing and stage-diving, said Marty Boratin, a veteran of the Buffalo music scene who regularly books concerts at the venue.
Boratin said another company, After Dark Presents, handled the Trophy Eyes booking but the band was aware of the venue’s prohibition on crowd-surfing, which involves band or audience members being held aloft and carried along the crowd in front of the stage.
Venues like Mohawk Place have barred stage-diving and crowd-surfing because of the potential risk for the performers and for music fans, Boratin said.
“It’s stupid and dangerous and people continue to do it,” he said.
Signs noting the prohibition are set up around the venue. Mohawk Place staffers will shut off the power to the stage if a band member breaks the rule, Boratin said.
This happened a few weeks ago late during a set by the band Apes of the State, he said, though no one was injured in that earlier incident, partly because the musician who dove in was about 5 feet, 1 inch tall and petite.
“They finished up their last song completely unplugged, with the crowd singing along, and she was a little miffed until I explained the whole situation,” Boratin said. “And then she was quite…
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