3 People Stabbed at “WE Fest” Country Music Festival in Minnesota
The annual “WE Fest” country music festival in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota was marred by a triple stabbing in a campsite adjacent to the festival early Thursday (8-7) morning. The three-day music festival at the Soo Pass Ranch began Wednesday and featured headliners such as Jason Aldean, Florida Georgia Line, Brad Paisley, and The Zac Brown Band.
According to the Becker County Sheriff’s Department, at 1:45 AM Thursday morning, a heavily-intoxicated concert goer at the Hilltop Campground across the road from WE Fest began shocking people with a handheld Taser. When the man was confronted by people in the campground, he brandished a knife, stabbing three men from Canada who were trying to stop him. All three men were transported to a local hospital via ambulance.

The accused stabber is 32-year-old Aaron Williams from Minot, North Dakota who was immediately arrested. “He took out a knife and started slashing them, and three of them received cuts on the arm,” Sheriff Kelly Shannon of the Becker County Sheriff’s Department told Detroit Lakes News. The three Canadian victims all received treatment at the hospital, and were later released.
Aaron Williams was arraigned in a local court Friday afternoon, pleading not guilty to the assault charges, and was released on bail. He is due in court again for a hearing on August 25th.
As of late Friday afternoon, the festival had also seen three other assaults, six DWI charges, five disorderly conduct charges, and 12 people arrested on warrant charges. However while the theme of many of the summer’s country music festivals and concerts in 2014 has been a spike in the amount of arrests, violence, and alcohol-related hospital visits, Becker County Sheriff Kelly Shannon tells InForum that the amount of incidents at WE Fest were actually down this year compared to previous years, despite the triple stabbing. Sheriff Shannon cites in part the strong police presence local authorities dispatched to the festival. At any time, 25 sheriff’s officers or Minnesota State Police were on the site, and police had a command center set up near the east gate of the fest.
Sheriff Shannon also says that the festival does a great job assisting law enforcement and concert goers by being conscious of safety and offering emergency medical services and chaplain crews for people in need. “They’re invaluable for everything they do for us,” Shannon told InForum.
WE Fest began in 1983 in a barn and drew approximately 9,000 people. Since then it has become one of the biggest country music festivals in the United States, and one of the biggest that offers camping as a major part of the experience. On Friday, the crowd swelled to nearly 50,000 attendees.
News of country concerts getting out of hand have been in the headlines this summer. Last weekend a drunk driver ran over a police officer at a Jason Aldean concert, and 30 concertgoers were taken to local hospitals. 55 people were arrested, and 22 taken to hospitals at a Keith Urban show at the Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Mass. Later it was also revealed that an alleged rape happened in the venue’s lawn section while as many as 15 people stood and watched and took video of the incident. There was also a report of a gang rape at the Faster Horses Festival in mid July. An annual event in Pittsburgh became a national story when pictures of trash and drunken patrons went viral in late June. And a 22-year-old man was found dead in a dumpster in late July after a Jason Aldean concert in what is thought to be an alcohol-related incident.
August 9, 2014 @ 10:43 am
Trigga
WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON AT THESE COINTRY CONCERTS. THIS IS GETTING OUT OF HAND. SO SAD
August 9, 2014 @ 10:58 am
The boys ’round here,
Drinkin’ way too much beer,
Assaultin’ them girls,
Startin’ them fights,
Runnin’ over cops
And drivin’ off drunk into the night
Sincerely,
-Dallas Davidson
August 9, 2014 @ 12:05 pm
Not to say that its necessarily a regional thing, but
its beginning to sound like some of these ol’ boys “UpNorth” can’t
hold their likker.
Of course, there are people with loose screws everywhere in the world, but
still, who can figure the sociology of this sectional phenomenon?
Maybe that crappy “music” is really bumming them out…..
August 9, 2014 @ 1:01 pm
large scandinavian and german heritage here in the upper midwest. holding our own isn’t an issue.
can you imagine three Dudley Do-Rights who end all their sentences with the word “buddy” trying to calm you down? i’d get a little stabby too.
August 10, 2014 @ 5:29 pm
Ok “buddy” so you think it’s ok to taze and stab people because the way they talk is annoying to you? We Have the same Scandinavian etc heritage up here as you do down there but we don’t carry tazers to parties! This idiot is lucky he didn’t injure any of these boys more seriously or killed one of them!
August 11, 2014 @ 2:11 pm
i wasn’t being serious Lori…
August 9, 2014 @ 1:19 pm
As someone pointed out on another one of these stories, right now all of these pop country tours are hitting the north hard because it is too hot in the South, and come fall and winter, the weather is too harsh up there to throw outdoor events. So we may start seeing these stories start creeping further south as fall gets closer. We’ll see.
August 9, 2014 @ 2:04 pm
Maybe so, Trigger, but I’ve been going to concerts and playing concerts all over the South for many decades, and hot weather has never kept us from doing anything. If
it ain’t hot in the summer in the South, we wouldn’t get our crops up, you know.
I’ve produced some large concerts down here in July and August, and neither the hot weather or mindless violence has been a problem. I’ve lost a few to rain, but never to the heat. And the event producer’s mindset and motives can affect the ambience of an event too, as we all know.
Now, to me “pop country” means someone who creates their music and their approach to “crossover” to a broader commercial audience than just hardcore country fans. The old honky-tonks could be rough and occasionally violent, but it wasn’t so much because of the music than say, somebody hitting on somebody else’s lady.
Perhaps this phony “bro-country” caters to an audience that attends these events to pretend they are badasses, like the self-referential characters in the songs. Or perhaps it is something deeper in the culture that is manifesting itself in these outbreaks. Like an entire age-group losing their moral compass simultaneously.
But that speculation is above my pay grade…
Best,
Ben
August 9, 2014 @ 9:12 pm
I’m from New Brunswick, Canada, and I would like to first say that its hot as hell here, and it’s usually 90 to 100 degrees here all summer, and very humid, so I wouldn’t say the heat thing is a factor, but we have concerts, big concerts here all the time, and this kind of crap never happens, and I know we maritime canadians like to drink, smoke, swear and party more than anyone else I’ve ever met. I wouldn’t go pointing to the north as the blame for all this, because you don’t have to be from the south to be a good hardworking country boy. I don’t know why this is happening, but it’s very sad. I have been to many concerts, and never see any violence. But I would say its the douche-bag bro attitude of many new country fans thats causing it.
August 9, 2014 @ 11:36 pm
My only point is, whether it is related to weather or not, most of the big Bro-Country tours right now are routing in the northern part of the country, while they’re planning to play the Southern part of the country in the fall. This is almost consistent across the board. I’m not saying that is the only reason there has been so much trouble up north, but you can’t have a big story about all the trouble at a big Bro-Country concert in the South when nobody is playing them. Even if you could play a big concert in the South in the summer, many times the weather is too prohibitive to play in the north in the late fall or winter. It’s natural they would focus on the north in the dead of summer, and work farther south as the year progresses. It will be interesting to see if this trend continues into the fall.
August 10, 2014 @ 6:48 am
That makes perfect sense to me, Trigger. The big event boys are maximizing the dough,which is natural. It isn’t that it is particularly cooler in the North in the summer, but that later in the year, they can still play outdoors in the South, but not up there. Gotcha.
But something, whether it is the style of the music, the lack of security, or the zeitgeist of the culture, is bringing out the worst in people.
I always wanted to write “zeitgeist”……
Ben
August 10, 2014 @ 8:09 am
I grew up in the NYC metro area and have been living in Northern Virginia for the last 20+ years. It’s only about 250 miles south of where I’m from, but I’d say the summers are more intense here. My family members from up north find the humidity here stifling. I remember going down to Savannah to visit my sister one August and that took the humidity to another level.
On another thread, someone from Massachussetts remarked that the young folks going to these concerts are pretty new to anything labeled “country music.” And since so much of this music sounds like cheesy party rock, maybe a lot of them are there largely for the party and the music is just an afterthought. And maybe those folks from further south who have been regular pop country listeners for a longer time might have more enthusiasm for the whatever music they’re hearing and more of them might actually be going to these concerts for the “musical experience.” My wife is one of those listeners (she likes the Fredericksburg station more than the DC station) and she kind of likes FGL OK. She gets annoyed with me a little when I mock them (i.e, “bring your sugar shaker over here.”)
August 11, 2014 @ 12:50 pm
You hit the nail squarely on the head when you said a younger crowd losing their moral compass. I hadgone to country concerts for years but have stopped completely due to the out of control “partying” of the 20-30 somethings.
August 11, 2014 @ 1:54 pm
Well said, Ben Jones.
August 9, 2014 @ 12:23 pm
Minot is in North Dakota, and has become a jumping off point into the Bakken oil fields, attracting a fair share of questionable characters.
August 9, 2014 @ 12:58 pm
It definitely has. As someone who lives just hours away from that city, I have had many friends who have worked or still work in and around the oil fields. They have said that most of the companies are so hard up for willing help that the standards for getting a job in the fields is basically zero.
I’m still not surprised by these stories however. I wont go to one of these big festivals anymore, seeing an act in a more low key setting like a club or concert hall is about as far as I will go now. Too many d-bags on various substances.
August 9, 2014 @ 12:55 pm
First country show I went to was hank 3 when I was 16. It was right after straight to hell came out. It ended early after a stabbing. I remember thinking “holy shit, country is way more punk rock than those punk rock shows!” It sucks when people pull that stuff at shows. Small bar venues or big festivals, cut it out.
August 9, 2014 @ 4:29 pm
Another sad situation for the state of country festivals. I am however, proud of my fellow countrymen for standing up to him. Happy they are okay but fear for the medical bills they had to go home with 🙁
August 9, 2014 @ 6:05 pm
Dumb bastard is lucky he didn’t get shot. Fortunately for him, the three guys were from Canada, where they have no 2nd Amendment. Too bad…
August 10, 2014 @ 9:27 am
Full moons do bring out the psycho crazy people.
August 10, 2014 @ 9:59 am
I suspect that these concerts are being marketed, whether overtly or subliminaly (with the tacit approval of the artists and their promoters), as drunkfests where fighting is a cool thing to do.
My favorite sport is boxing and the combatants respect and fear each other and, with few exceptions, after the fights are complimentary and sportsmanlike toward each other.
And I never see any fights in the crowds.
Best I can tell, this kind of stupidity is a big part of what the artists and their promoters sell to their juvenile (or juvenile-acting) audiences.
I go to college football games and NASCAR races all the time and seldom see anything like this.
August 10, 2014 @ 11:56 pm
I feel like i would be safer at a Lil Wayne concert.
George Strait/Alan Jackson don’t have this issue at shows but their music don’t make people wanna go all trailer trash.
August 11, 2014 @ 8:46 am
I’ll be very interested to see if this trend continues at shows in the South. Having lived in both the North and South for many years, my general impression is people in the south are raised on country, and people in the north on rock. (Again, this is very general, but I think it’s relevant.) When I lived in NC and even in FL, almost everyone I met was a country fan or at least knew a lot of country music, it was a natural part of life like breathing. When I lived in New England, even as recently as 5 years ago, pretty much NO ONE knew or cared about country music. Rock was king.
I don’t think it’s really about the character of people in the north vs the south – it’s about the majority of these people going to “country” concerts in the North being rock fans who JUST started listening to country when it turned into party rock anthem. They’re new fans who have no clue about the tradition of country music. It’s just another show for them to get wasted and act like dumbasses. This is why, I think there will be fewer of these incidents in the South. I don’t see a stadium full of (majority) lifelong country fans acting the same as one full of (majority) lifelong rock fans.
August 11, 2014 @ 10:40 am
Trigger, I commend you on reporting the recent events going on at some country shows, and this WeFest article, but to be fair (and it is hard too with some of the acts WeFest now attracts) but WeFest has always had it’s share of problems. You get 50K-75K people camping in the hot August sun, booze from dusk til dawn and this kind of shit happens. The music has nothing to do with it, as similar things happened 20-30 years ago when true country acts were playing there.
Now, one could argue if you brought lesser known/mainstream acts to a festival, then you wouldn’t attract the less knower/retarded idiots that cause trouble. I.E. this dude doesn’t show at a Lukas Nelson or Sturgill Simpson show cause he has no clue who they are and is probably attending these mainstream shows trolling for girls to do god knows what to them.
I’ve said in other blogs of this topic, it isn’t the music, it is the lack of mental capacity for some of the fans to understand the music and the booze are escapes, they are not you becoming the show, you don’t become the storyline of the song, you are not special and life of the party. But take a selfie and tweet it and all of a sudden you are the headliner….I just hope 99% of those in attendance at WeFest don’t vote…they are to stupid to.
August 11, 2014 @ 11:19 am
Tim,
In this article I specifically included information from the local sheriff that the rate of incidents at this particular event were down this year. I felt like I gave a very fair perspective on the per capita degree of these incidents by mentioning the attendance. And also, like with all of the news stories I have run about these incidents, have left any opinions about what might be causing these problems out of the conversation. Some may think these opinions are implied simply by me posting these stories, but they are not present. Maybe larger outlets, including Billboard Magazine and the Washington Post have picked up on this thread, and Saving Country Music has taken the point in finding these stories and bringing them into the national narrative about what may or may not be a growing problem. I do my best to simply tell the story, and leave speculation about the causes or significance of it for other articles.
August 11, 2014 @ 12:41 pm
Tim – WE Fest goers can pretty much do anything and everything that they want for 5 days straight. The security is the issue here, not what kind of music is playing. I don’t care who is on stage, if you put 50K people together and encourage them to be drunk idiots for 5 days straight then you are going to have trouble. State Patrols are there but they sit in their cars and watch for traffic violators while half of the concert goers are so intoxicated they can barely walk, half of them are minors. WE Fest is fun and there are a lot of really good respectable people there too – it’s just gotten to be “the” summer party for anyone 25 and younger from ND to WI. BTW …. it’s “stupid too”, not stupid to.
August 11, 2014 @ 12:32 pm
There are more incidents that don’t get reported to the police even when they get reported to the WE Fest security. A female right behind us was assaulted after another (heavily intoxicated) male cut her tent open and tried to rape her until her boyfriend woke up and scared the intruder off. WE Fest security is a joke. They did NOTHING for this woman. They didn’t even remove the man that did it from the property. Many (probably all) of the so called security people there are locals that have no training in crowd control or emergency situations. We had a young lady in our campsite puking her guts out from too much liquor at about 4pm one day – the chaplains did to an excellent job of taking care of her and getting her to safety, but she wasn’t a threat to anyone but herself. Minors are smashed drunk everywhere you look and everyone just turns a cheek to it – WE Fest is obviously more concerned about profits than they are of public safety. Hire a professional security company to patrol this chaos – the more minors you have drinking the more trouble you are going to incur and the more you will chase out the people who just want to come and have a respectably responsible good time.
August 11, 2014 @ 2:40 pm
Why can’t these pop country concerts be more civilized like Rock or Urban genre concerts 😉 I usually enjoy the off color commentary on this website but I think these stories about concert goers are kind of misleading and little bit out of bounds in the respect that you are trying to attach the artists to them. This particular story is about a guy in the campground across the street at 1:45am and it’s not even made clear if he actually attended the concert (although he most likely did). There were 50,000 people in attendance that night. I would suspect something bad would happen at a quilt show if 50,000 where there. Sorry for the rant but it just seems to me that the point of these stories are “see! pop country is so evil that it makes people stab other people.” OK, I’m calming down now… Sorry and please be easy on me.
August 11, 2014 @ 3:30 pm
The litmus test for running these stories is if the local journalists feel like what happened was newsworthy in their local communities. I thought I did a fair job with this story by also presenting the words from the sheriff that the amount of issues they had were actually down this year compared to previous ones. Saving Country Music has taken the point in compiling these stories so people can make their own decisions of whether this is a bigger, more alarming trend or not. I could have told you even before I started running these stories that as time went on, people were going to become tired of them. That doesn’t mean it’s is still not important that someone tells them. My biggest concern is that eventually we are going to see a story that pales in comparison to all the others. It’s out there, it’s just a matter of time before it transpires.
August 11, 2014 @ 3:35 pm
I grew up in So Cal, and attended many music festivals and LARGE concerts, and ALL of us were there to see the show on stage, and not a bunch of drunk stupid people trying to get their groove on! It’s NOT the weather, or the North and the South or even Obama’s fault! Of all the concerts I have been to, we were all sane enough to want to listen to the music,and not get drunk and be the subject of the next country hit. You can’t continue to support bad musicians and bad songs and justify the BS at these shows. I’m sure these “bro-cuntry artist, are good musicians, but the crap they are try to feed me a while they tell me it’s “good for me” is a lie! And when I continue to read about all of these bad shows involving bad music, I’m pretty sure the only people NOT getting the message are the artists. Is this the equivalent of steroids in baseball, because I am pretty there is NOT one Hall-of-Famer in this “Bro-Cuntry” crowd!
August 11, 2014 @ 6:23 pm
When you compare the huge number of people(50,000) that came out to We Fest and you only have one idiot that caused an issue that is AMAZING!! This was my first year and we camped all three days and I didnt see one fight break out, even with the huge turnout when Brantley Gilbert took the stage. There was tons of security and everyone enjoyed the music safely. So I say Bravo to the crew at We Fest for a fun and safe experience!!