Yeppoon woman Riqui Vines assaulted at Lost and Found festival Rockhampton
What began as a fun night out at a music festival could end in permanent optical damage for a Central Queensland woman after she was assaulted by another woman who was ‘looking for a fight’.
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What began as a fun night out at a music festival could end in permanent optical damage for a Central Queensland woman after she was allegedly viciously assaulted by another woman in the mosh pit.
Yeppoon university student Riqui Vines, 26, and her aunty Angela Elliott, 41, were enjoying the Lost and Found Music Festival at the Rockhampton Showgrounds on Saturday, October 15, when Riqui was allegedly punched and elbowed in the face by a younger woman who she says was ‘looking for a fight’.
Riqui was knocked unconscious and suffered swelling to her face as well as a nasty eye injury in the alleged assault, which she said unfolded after she bumped into her alleged attacker.
“It was about 7pm and we were in the mosh pit and trying to get to the front like everyone else,” Riqui said.
“Some girls had warned me to watch out for this girl as she had been shoving people and trying to start fights.
“I was at the front near this girl and was getting crammed in by the crowd. I don’t know if she punched me or elbowed me, but I got a busted lip and instinctively hit her back to protect myself and asked her to settle down and said I was there to have fun.”
Riqui said she thought the confrontation had ended as the other woman appeared to calm down and everyone kept dancing, but 10 minutes later things took a turn for the worse.
“Masked Wolf (Australian rapper) was coming on and heaps of people were coming into the mosh pit and pushing toward the front,” Riqui said.
“I was pushed into this girl and out of the blue she just elbowed me in the eye. I fell back into other people and everything was a daze from there; she had concussed me, I didn’t know what had happened.
“I was trying to get back up because it looked like she was going to go me again but I couldn’t stand.
“My aunty saw her going for me and grabbed her and she punched my aunty in the forehead. My aunty got her to the ground and she crawled out of the mosh pit.
“I turned to these two guys and just blacked out, then I saw someone crawling, and then the next thing I remember was being almost out of the mosh pit being carried out.”
Riqui said she was rushed to the medical pavilion and was laying down ‘out of it’.
“I couldn’t walk, I could barely move, my eyes were rolling back in my head and I was falling in and out of consciousness,” she said.
“I ended up being taken to the Rockhampton Hospital in an ambulance and they wheeled me in, it was really busy, and I could barely walk and wasn’t making any sense.
“The waiting room was packed and it had been about two hours since I was hit and I remember all the pain starting to hit me. I was in agony and crying out in the waiting room.”
Riqui said her mother drove from Yeppoon and rushed her down to the Capricorn Coast Hospital for pain relief and urgent care.
She said she returned to Rockhampton Hospital on Sunday for scans and while luckily no bones in her face were broken, it was a waiting game to find out if her badly injured eye was permanently damaged.
“I have a concussion and I also have to go to an optometrist because I have blurry vision in the injured eye. Once the swelling goes down I have to see if there is permanent damage,” she said.
“My face is pretty puffy, my eye is starting to open, it was giving me headaches not being able to open my eye, I have blood all through the whites of my eye.
“My aunty said her head is very sore, she doesn’t have any bruising but it definitely hurt and she got some hair ripped out as well.”
Riqui said the ordeal had ruined a fun event and she likely would not attend another festival in Rockhampton again.
“We were having so much fun, we were dancing with other girls I made friends with in the mosh pit and bumping into each other, it’s just what happens at festivals,” she said.
“I was just trying to have a good time. I’ve never been in a fight before.
“It’s not usually the type of festival I would attend, I prefer Australian and indie rock bands; the only reason we went was because my aunty got free tickets.
“I have been to a lot of festivals before and if people were being too rough in the crowd, they always stop the show and ask people to calm down, but nobody stopped this.
“It was too chaotic, too aggressive and while there was security there, it felt like the festival goers were left to sort it out themselves in the crowd.”
After putting a call-out on social media asking for help to identify her alleged attacker from a photo taken at the festival, Riqui said she received a flood of messages and she and her aunty had both made statements to police.
Riqui said the incident had impacted her more than she realised and hoped justice would be served in court.
“I was walking down the main street earlier and saw a girl with long blonde hair like her (the alleged attacker) and I just froze, I didn’t realise how much it had impacted me and it’s not fair that I have to feel that way,” she said.
“I’d like to see her behind bars, it was a completely unprovoked attack and I never had the chance to defend myself.
“I can’t believe anyone would do that, it makes me sick, I am an adult and think I can handle myself but there were young girls there that were smaller and if she did that to them it could have killed them. I’m grateful it was me and not them.”
Police investigations are ongoing.
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