LOS ANGELES _Two women and a man died after attending a rave over the weekend near Fontana, officials said Monday, heightening concerns about drugs and other safety problems that have marred such events.
All three victims were attending the Hard Summer rave, which was moved from the Los Angeles County Fairgrounds in Pomona last year after two college students died after using drugs. This year's Hard Summer was held at the Auto Club Speedway near Fontana, and despite last year's deaths, had record attendance.
Deaths at raves have become a health issue in Southern California, with some doctors and others calling on government agencies to ban such events from public venues. Hard Summer started as a smaller event near Chinatown and has grown into one of nation's premier raves after it was acquired by Beverly Hills-based Live Nation.
The victims at the recent event were taken to emergency rooms over the weekend; two deaths occurred Saturday and one Sunday, sheriff's spokeswoman Jodi Miller said.
One of the people who died was found unresponsive, and emergency workers attempted CPR. Another had a seizure, and the third is believed to have had chest pain, Miller said.
The victims were identified as Derek Lee, 22, of San Francisco; Alyssa Dominguez, 21, of San Diego; and Roxanne Ngo, 22, of Chino Hills.
The three were among nine people taken to hospitals from the rave, Miller said. The two-day Hard Summer event brought nearly 147,000 people to the Auto Club Speedway, she said.
There has been ongoing concern about the numbers of people who die after attending raves in Southern California after taking drugs associated with the rave experience.
Drug overdoses have been a major problem at electronic dance music festivals, where use of ecstasy and similar drugs are closely tied to such events.
Venues such as the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum have stopped hosting raves. But they have continued elsewhere, often farther from the city center, such as at the San Manuel Amphitheater in Devore, which is owned by San Bernardino County and managed by Live Nation Entertainment.
The two deaths at last summer's Hard Summer caused emergency room physicians in Los Angeles County to call for an end to large raves.
"We've seen this all around the nation ... in L.A., it popped up in Chicago, in San Francisco, in New York," Dr. Marc Futernick, emergency services medical director at Dignity Health California Hospital Medical Center in downtown Los Angeles, said last year. "There's something about these events that leads to this rampant drug abuse ... and young adults are really getting hurt and paying the price."
