Two teenage girls have died from apparent overdoses after attending the Hard Summer Music Festival in Pomona, the L.A. County coroner’s office confirmed Sunday morning.
The girls, who were 18 and 19, were hospitalized Saturday night, Lt. Fred Corral with the coroner’s office said.
The 18-year-old was pronounced dead around 6 p.m. and the 19-year-old died about two hours later.
Autopsies were expected to be performed in the coming week.
The sold-out two-day festival continued Sunday at the Fairplex, located at 1101 West McKinley Ave. (map).
About 65,000 people were expected to attend each day of the event, making it the biggest music festival of its kind in Los Angeles County, ahead FYF which attracts a total of about 80,000 people, the Los Angeles Times reported. Coachella remains the largest music gathering in Southern California with an estimated 100,000 visitors per day for two consecutive weekends.
Less than two months ago, a UC Irvine graduate who lived in San Francisco died from a fatal overdose of Ecstasy at the Electric Daisy Carnival in Las Vegas.
And Saturday’s deaths are not the first to happen at Hard. Another 19-year-old woman died from a suspected overdose at the same music gathering in 2014 when it was held in South El Monte.
That same year, 24-year-old Kimchi Truong of Oakland also died from an apparent drug or alcohol overdose at the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.
Ecstasy is a popular drug at such music festivals and can cause the body’s temperature to rise as high as 108 degrees, potentially destroying the person’s organs leading to multi-organ system failure, seizures, coma and death, the Times reported.
L.A. police have reportedly warned about the widespread use of the drug at raves.