SEATTLE — When we experience something that brings you joy, you continue to seek it.
“I’ve been going to festivals since I was 15,” said Jayson Warren.
He, his fiancé and they’re friends drove to Beyond Wonderland at the Gorge Amphitheater to camp for the weekend.
“We got pushed to the very, very back of the very last section and that’s where everything happened,” Warren said.
On Saturday, they decided to head back to their campsite and heard a couple pops, then a man screaming.
“'You just killed my girlfriend,' and he just started screaming 'why, help me, what are you doing, why would you do this,'” Warren recalled.
Warren called 911 and dispatch told him to hide.
“We heard the grass rustling under his footsteps,” Warren said.
A golf cart with security and a live nation employee rolled up soon after.
“At least three or four more shots he fired at the golf cart," said Warren .
Warren said the security woman screamed at them to run.
“We ran as fast as we could. I didn’t stop until I got to the entrance.”
Two people were killed and three injured during that shooting.
“People just wanted to hang out and have fun and now they aren’t going to be able to do anything, ever,” said Warren.
Now, that thing that brought him so much joy is hard to even think about.
“I really don’t know if I want to go to another festival. They’re really fun, but it’s not worth my life,” said Warren.
Warren said there needs to be more security and that the security at this event is the worst he’s seen, adding no one checked their car.
Production company Insomniac Events Founder and CEO Pasquale Rotella posted a statement on social media saying the festival continued during and after the incident at the request of law enforcement.
KING 5 reached out to Live Nation multiple times and is still waiting for a response.
Festivalgoer recalls coming face to face with Gorge gunman
After two people where killed and three others were hurt Saturday night in a shooting at the campgrounds at the Gorge, more festivalgoers are sharing their terrifying ordeals.
"As I was running up to them, it was pretty obvious they were both dead," a festivalgoer named Garrett told KREM News.
Garrett said he even came face-to-face with the gunman.
"This dude holding a pistol, he had like, I could see he was pointing at me with a flashlight on. I was like, 'What the f--- are you doing?! Drop your gun!'" said Garrett. "He was pointing at me and telling me to get away."
After the tragedy, chaos ensued.
“Live Nation needs to do a better job," said Jordan Epperly, a Portland resident who attended the festival. "It was pretty intense, it was kind of dystopian."
For hours into the cold morning, those who'd been confined to the venue were locked out of the campsite.
"There was hundreds of people stranded outside, unable to go to their tents," said Epperly.
The electronic dance music community is now demanding accountability for this security failure.
"A large portion of the staff seemed like they were kids. I'm talking like 16, 17 years old," said Epperly.
Robert Smith from Spokane, who also attended the festival and stayed on the campgrounds, echoed Epperly's concerns about the staff's ages.
“I didn't feel comfortable at all having them being the staff," said Smith. “Staff of Live Nation, the whole time, there were like 17, 18-year-olds... I just don't see how you can rely on young kids to be able to control a crowd of 25,000 people that range from 18 to 70 years old."
Both Epperly and Smith said bomb-sniffing canines were present, but no metal detectors and few searches, if any.
"I didn't see anybody searched when we were in line. And there was probably 10 lines of cars to my left and right," said Epperly.
"There was just canines," added Smith. "They don't wand down stuff, they kind of just look through it. And they don't really do a very good job of it."
Even artists on the Beyond Wonderland line-up, like Seattle's own Tony H, are now calling for action.
"Something's gotta give," Tony H told KING 5. "I can’t check everyone’s cars so I’m like relying on security and whoever’s running the festivals to be, like, looking out for us.”
Others are just trying to get their things back-- medications included-- from secured lockers they had paid for.
"Everyone assumed they were going back into the venue for a second day and would be able to get their stuff, but they couldn’t get in the venue on the second day," said Epperly. "People waited, like, more than six hours and it still didn't happen, and people had to leave.”
For those in emotional distress, Tony H hopes fans know they can reach out to him on social media.
"If you just want to talk, vent, cry, um, process-- cause I'm also processing too-- um, I'm here," he said.
KING 5 reached out to Live Nation multiple times and we are still waiting for a response.
Pasquale Rotella, the CEO of the production company that put on the event, Insomniac, took to Instagram Sunday night to say the Gorge has been successfully hosting events for decades, and to share his condolences.