Since “the incident,” James “JP” Patrick has been having nightmares
“I can’t get it out of my head,” says Patrick, an artist and DJ based in Brooklyn Center.
He’s referring to the penultimate night of Burning Man, the weeklong arts festival in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert — just before the festival’s climactic ritual of burning a massive wooden effigy known as “The Man.”
At dusk on Aug. 30, Patrick was sitting on the playa meditating when a Cybertruck wrapped with Christmas lights ran him over, dragging him along the playa ground for several seconds as he screamed.
“The impact was immediate, obviously, but it wasn't even the impact that hurt,” Patrick recalls. "It was the being drug under the car. That was the part that was just, not only physically very painful, but almost more so just goddamn terrifying.”
Patrick says his right foot was almost completely severed and his left foot was mangled and broken.
What happened on the playa
Patrick, the founder of the Minneapolis electric music school Slam Academy, attended the arts festival with his wife, fellow Minnesota artist Jade Patrick, and their twin sons.
He was serving as a lead audio engineer for one of the big sound camps. Before running sound for one of the camp’s events, Patrick says he walked past the edge of the site to sit and meditate on the ground. Patrick says he was sober and wore a light-up necklace.
“I'm just looking out over the beautiful golden hour sunlight, as the sun is over the mountains, and I see thousands of people having the time of their life,” Patrick recalls. “I'm just like: This is so magical.”
Patrick continues: “I'm closing my eyes and breathing and centering myself before kind of a crescendo of the entire project, and just with absolutely zero warning whatsoever — because these electric cars are dead silent, right? — All of a sudden, I'm being drug under this car.”
Neither Jade Patrick nor the twins witnessed the Cybertruck hit Patrick, but she arrived at the scene moments later.
According to the Patricks, onlookers swarmed the Cybertruck to get it to stop and pulled him out from beneath.
‘Chaotic and alarming’
“I went down there, got on the ground next to him, and was like, what happened? It was chaotic, and it was alarming,” Jade Patrick says.
“He was barely responsive, and he just looked weak. I looked down at his legs, and his right leg, just, like, ended at his ankle.”
Patrick was then airlifted to the trauma center at Renown Regional Medical Center in Reno, where he had emergency surgery, using several screws and pins to reattach and realign his feet. After a few days, he flew home and was treated at an Allina facility.
He’s now recovering at his Brooklyn Center home.
He says he won’t be able to put any weight on his feet for three months, after which he’ll do physical therapy to learn to walk again.
“I'll be walking in about six months, fully on my own,” Patrick says of his prognosis.
Patrick is navigating the physical pain, as well as the emotional work of asking his community for financial help and processing the memory of the incident.
“Needing to ask for help, that's been really hard, because I, of course, would love to just like be a tough guy, but I'm just not in this case,” he says.
“The other emotionally really, really difficult part I'm just starting to tackle on my own is the trauma of what it felt like to be drug under a truck and screaming, you know, and knowing that they don't hear me.”
A community steps in
The Patricks, who are self-employed artists, say their community has stepped in to take care of them with everything from meal trains to medical care to organizing a GoFundMe to pay for medical expenses, lost wages, home support and childcare (in addition to the 13-year-old twins, the Patricks also have two toddlers).
According to a SFGate article, the helicopter ride out of Burning Man itself has a price tag of $50,000. At press time, the GoFundMe had exceeded $75,000.
“It's a whole lot of uncertainty. I wish we had a giant disability policy, insurance policy, but we don't, so this is where the GoFundMe funds are super appreciated and really providing a ton of relief for our family,” Jade Patrick says.
“The thing that's really keeping us afloat is the immense amount of gratitude we feel for the people around us and the people coming together to support us. It's really overwhelming and beautiful.”
“I'm so, so grateful to be alive and to be able to come back to all this,” Patrick says.
The Patricks say they hold no animus towards the festival and plan to return someday.
Jade Patrick says the driver of the Cybertruck stayed on the scene and cooperated; the Patricks declined to comment on pursuing legal action.
Art cars at Burning Man
Burning Man only allows “art cars” to drive the playa, which the festival licenses through its “Mutant Vehicles” program, which is likely why the Cybertruck was festooned with Christmas lights.
The festival also stipulates that vehicles should be going 5 mph or less. According to the Reno Gazette-Journal, an art car hit and killed a woman in 2014 at the festival. SFGate also reported a homicide and possible electrocution at Burning Man this year.
The Burning Man festival, Jade Patrick says, has not reached out in any official capacity, nor have they released a statement.
Burning Man did not respond to MPR News’ request for comment by press time.
“In a perfect world, sure, [Burning Man] could have somehow mitigated this,” Jade Patrick says.
“But reality is, accidents are going to happen, especially in a place where there is so much freedom.”
