Stagecoach Concludes With Over 170 Arrested

Authorities arrested 174 people, mostly for alcohol-related offenses, over
the three days of the Stagecoach Country Music Festival, a police spokesman said today.
   Forty-eight people were arrested Sunday, 69 on Saturday and 57
on Friday, the Indio Police Department's Ben Guitron said.
   On the festival's last day, there was ``nothing significant (crime-wise)
-- the majority (of arrests) were alcohol-related, a few fights,'' Guitron
said.
   Police are continuing to investigate the most serious crime that
occurred during the festival -- the sexual assault of a 17-year-old girl inside a portable bathroom on the grounds Friday night, he said. No arrests have been made.
   "The detectives are still on the case,'' Guitron said, urging anyone
with information about the assault to call police at (760) 391-4057.
    The girl told police that she was using a portable bathroom
inside the festival's main entrance around 8:30 p.m. Friday when a man opened the door,and along with two other men, sexually assaulted her, then took off.
   The teen, whose name was withheld, sought help from staff at a first
aid booth before she was taken to a hospital for treatment, Guitron
said.
   "The victim described the suspects as males, and that one of
the suspects had blond hair,'' he said.
   The victim is not a resident of the Coachella Valley and was attending
the concert with friends, he said.
   It was the second year in a row that a sexual assault was reported
at Stagecoach. Last year, a woman was raped by a man working as a parking lot attendant.
   There were proportionally more arrests at Stagecoach
than the two weekends of the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival. The
arrest tally was 134 the first weekend of Coachella and 101 the second
weekend, according to police.
   Stagecoach had a daily paid attendance of 55,000, and Coachella drew
roughly 85,000 people a day.
   Like Coachella, Stagecoach was expanded this year -- to three days
instead of two. And like Coachella, it sold out in January soon after tickets
became available.