An Arlington Heights man described by friends as a metal music fan has died weeks after they said he disappeared from the final day of the Riot Fest festival in North Lawndale’s Douglass Park only to be found injured the next day at an area hospital.
Friends and family located Stephen Shult, 58, at Stroger Hospital, two miles from the festival, the day after friends and family lost track of him on Sept. 22. He suffered head injuries that his friends and family suspect came through some violent action. On Thursday, Shult died at the West Side hospital.
“We don’t have a first-person view of what actually happened, but based on all the scrapes and bruises on his arms and legs and the brain injury, the most common thing that we all concluded was that he had to have been trampled,” longtime friend Brian Soto told the Tribune.
But an autopsy performed on Saturday was inconclusive, according to the Cook County medical examiner’s office. It would take several weeks for a final ruling on Shult’s cause and manner of death.
Shult’s wife and daughters declined to comment when reached by phone. A GoFundMe set up by one of his daughters had raised $5,739 as of Saturday afternoon. In the update post announcing Shult’s death, his family said his condition deteriorated after early signs of recovery.
Shult’s friend Soto, 38, who accompanied him to the festival, told the Tribune that Shult had been with him before the concert and only went missing after the concert began.
A resident of the western suburbs, Shult was a big fan of metal music, particularly the acts Dio, Metallica, Mastodon and Rob Zombie. “The two things that he was always doing (were) listening to metal music and watching the cooking channel on mute,” Soto said.
Shult had been particularly excited to see the band Slayer, so Soto—who’d attended the festival for several years—invited him to use the free tickets he’d won. They attended the festival Saturday and spent almost all Sunday camped near the Metro Stage. Soto said they had agreed to meet at the festival Ferris Wheel in the event they were separated.
That Sunday night, Soto said Shult left the area where they had been sitting just after Slayer began to play, wanting to get closer to the stage. His daughter observed just after he left that he’d forgotten his phone, so they went to meet him at the Ferris wheel as previously discussed. “He never showed up,” Soto said.
The family reported Shult missing to police and later found out from a festival worker’s Facebook message that he had been taken to Stroger Hospital, Soto said. At the hospital, Soto said they found Shult in “rough shape.”
A spokesperson for Chicago police said they were notified about the death on Friday and that officers “responded to Stroger regarding the death of a 58-year-old male who suffered an injury to the head.” Police called the matter a “non-criminal death.”
In a social media post Friday, the organizers of Riot Fest offered condolences to Shult’s family, saying he suffered a medical incident before the Slayer performance. Festival organizers also refuted online speculation that Shult’s may have been injured by Moshing, a sometimes violent form of dance at metal concerts sometimes called slam dancing.
“We are aware of the various speculations surrounding this tragedy, including claims that it may be linked to the Slayer crowd,” the post read. “However, we want to clarify that this is not the case.”
Soto said it was “frustrating” to see the Riot Fest post that said Shult had been injured before the performance at the Ferris wheel.
Funeral arrangements for Shult were pending.