A Minneapolis man attending Burning Man was nearly killed last weekend after being run over by a Cybertruck while meditating in Nevada’s Black Rock Desert, according to his shocked wife.
“He’s not going to be walking for months, but we’re so lucky,” Jade Patrick told the SF Gate on Thursday. “Had they been six inches more to the left or whatever, they would have just completely crushed his chest and or head and he wouldn’t have been with us.”
Patrick said she and her 13-year-old twin sons were nearby when the vehicle, dubbed an “art car,” mashed her husband James “JP” Patrick’s feet to the point where bones and tendons were visible.
JP, a DJ who runs a music production school, was airlifted to Reno and underwent surgery before returning home.
The person driving the creatively modified vehicle stopped to help following the “genuine accident,” though Patrick expects her husband’s medical bills will top $50,000.
However, a GoFundMe set up to help the injured man get back on his damaged feet exceeded its goal of $60,000 by Friday.
Burning Man organizers didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. Tales from the event that ended on Monday have continued to make headlines in the days since.
On Wednesday, a 37-year-old man who was found dead in a pool of blood at Burning Man last weekend, was publicly identified as Vadim Kruglov of Washington State. His death is being investigated as a homicide.
The Pershing County Sheriff’s Department also arrested a California man for allegedly sexually assaulting a woman at the festival, as well as a convicted felon carrying firearms and “large quantities of drugs.”
The Reno Gazette reported that a male Burning Man attendee was airlifted to a trauma center after being electrocuted during the nine-day event that attracts about 70,000 people to northern Nevada each year. That man’s status is not currently known.
