'Soulmates' Killed At Music Fest Were Allegedly The Victims of A Man High On Mushrooms
The man charged with fatally shooting an engaged Seattle couple, severely injuring his girlfriend and wounding two others at a Washington state musical festival told police he was hallucinating on mushrooms at the time, according to an arrest affidavit.
Josilyn Ruiz, 26, and her fiancée, 29-year-old Brandy Escamilla, were pronounced dead after being shot as they walked through a campground at the Beyond Wonderland electronic dance music festival at The Gorge Amphitheatre in Grant County, Washington, on June 17.
Ruiz’s sister said in an Instagram post that the couple’s love for each other “was truly infinite.” “Brandy was her soulmate and her greatest love and reason for living. Their love was unconditional and unbreakable, something so profound that I always envied. Clearly it was so strong it kept them together until the end.”
Josilyn Ruiz (left) and Brandy Escamilla shared a love that was "unconditional and unbreakable," Ruiz's sister said.
The suspected shooter, James M. Kelly, 26, an active-duty Army soldier based at Joint Base Lewis-McChord, south of Tacoma, was arrested at the scene after being shot and injured by an undercover police officer. He was treated at a hospital before being taken to the Grant County Jail. He has been charged with two counts of first-degree murder, two counts of first-degree assault and first-degree assault domestic violence. He made his first court appearance from jail on Wednesday, when a judge ordered that he be held without bail.
Escamilla was “kind, caring, the kind of person that would light up a room with her energy and her beautiful smile,” her aunt Alex Escamilla wrote in a GoFundMe posting she created for funeral and other expenses, saying that her niece and Ruiz “enjoyed going on endless adventures alongside their cat, Otis, and their friends.”
Ruiz and Escamilla were nurses who lived together in Seattle, a friend and neighbor, Devon Breithart, said on Facebook. Escamilla proposed to Ruiz during a Canada vacation in January 2022, and Ruiz “proposed back” while the couple were boating on a Seattle lake. Ruiz was taking acting classes in Seattle, and Escamilla had recently joined a softball league, Briethart said.
Brandy Escamilla proposes to Josilyn Ruiz in Canada in January 2022.
Kelly and Lily Luksich, his 20-year-old girlfriend of about a year, drove together to the festival and were sleeping in a tent at the festival’s campgrounds. On Saturday, Kelly ingested mushrooms and began to experience hallucinations while the couple were walking from the campgrounds to the concert venue, police said in the arrest affidavit. Investigators said he told them that he’d previously had a bad hallucination experience from a similar dose from the same source of mushrooms.
Kelly “began to believe that the world was ending” as a result of the hallucinations, he allegedly told police, and hurried back to the campground with Luksich, who later told police he repeatedly said versions of “this is the end.” At their campsite, he retrieved a handgun, loaded it and fired multiple shots at Escamilla and Ruiz as they walked nearby, according to the arrest affidavit.
He then allegedly shot Andrew Cuadra (who also goes by August Morningstar), a concertgoer from Eugene, Oregon, in his upper torso as he approached Kelly in the campground, according to the arrest affidavit. The 31-year-old father had surgery and will require extensive physical therapy for his injured arm and shoulder, a GoFundMe organized to help with his medical expenses said.
Luksich called 911 from her cellphone while following Kelly as he moved through the campground, police said, but he took her phone and threw it aside. He then fired at least twice at the utility vehicle that private security guard Lori Williams, 61, was driving in response to reports of gunfire, police said. She suffered minor injuries from a bullet that pierced the window of the utility vehicle and deflected off her eyeglasses, according to the affidavit and Grant County Sheriff Joe Kriete in a Facebook post Wednesday.
Lily Luksich in an intensive care unit after the shooting.
Kelly then fired several shots at a police drone being used to track Kelly and Luksich, police said. He shot Luksich multiple times, which caused life-threatening and “permanent injuries,” according to the arrest affidavit.
The bullets “caused significant injuries to Lily’s foot, leg, pelvic bones and internal organs,” a family friend wrote in a GoFundMe post for Lucksich, noting that after “extensive surgery,” she was airlifted Monday evening to Harborview Hospital in Seattle. On Thursday, doctors had scheduled surgery to remove a bullet lodged in Luksich’s back.
The Ruiz and Escamilla families have retained an attorney, Kevin Boyle, who previously represented the victims of the Route 91 Harvest Music Festival mass shooting in Las Vegas in 2017, to investigate the circumstances of the Gorge shooting.
In a statement shared with HuffPost, Boyle said the families were not after money but were hoping to prevent similar incidents. He questioned the role of Live Nation, which owns and operates The Gorge Amphitheatre and campgrounds.
“Live Nation has a legal duty to its paying guests to keep them safe. Live Nation states on the campground website that no guns are allowed. So the question is, what do they do to keep guns out of their paid venue?” he said. “I know I always get searched when I go to a concert.”
Kelly is scheduled to appear in court again on July 5.
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CORRECTION: An earlier version of this story mistakenly referred to Josilyn Ruiz’s sister as her twin rather than her younger sister.
