Tragedy at SXSW: It's been ten years
Let's remember Steven, Jamie, Sandy and Deandre, who were just out to hear some live music
“I WAS TWO BLOCKS AWAY”
That was a post I kept seeing variations of in the early morning of Thursday March 14, 2014. “We were outside the Mohawk just 15 minutes earlier.” It could have been any of us, but it was Steven Craenmehr, 35 and Jamie West, 27, who were pronounced dead at the scene. Sandy Le, 26, would die four days later, and DeAndre Tatum, 18, ten days after that. Four people with different backgrounds, coming together on Red River Street to hear the music and feed off the energy. It could have been any of us.
The night of Wednesday March 13 had been one of the happiest I’ve ever spent at SXSW. Margaret Moser hosted the Austin Music Awards for the 31st and final time and every Austin musician, DJ, writer, clubowner and manager not working turned out. It’s been called the Austin music prom, but the last Austin Moser Awards were more like a family reunion.
I got out in the fresh air outside the Convention Center at about midnight and decided to walk as far as I could before hopping in a pedicab. But strolling felt so good I just kept walking. When I was almost home, a couple cop cars screeched forward with lights going crazy, then an ambulance. Then two more. Something bad had happened.
In 27 years of SXSW, no one had died. But due to an insanely selfish act that lasted less than a minute, four lost their lives and 19 more were hospitalized.
People from all over the world come to Austin each March to discover what they have in common. They roam the streets in search of music that’s going to make them feel most alive. Some of us had done that every March since 1987.
The SXSW experience became an almost sacred part of being an Austin music fan, and that was violated at about 12:30 a.m. on March 14, when a 21-year-old man fled police in a borrowed Honda Civic and mowed down all those people on Red River. Daniel Northcutt was manning a food booth at the Mohawk when he ran outside with everybody else from the X show to see what all the screaming was about. “The only thing going through the minds of any of the first responders was ‘help these people,’” said Northcutt, who owned the Frank gourmet hot dog restaurant. The Mohawk was full of heroes doing what anyone with a heart would do, attending to the wounded until the ambulances arrived. Blood was on the ground and anguish in the air.
On Frank’s outside wall was a mural that changed every month and on March 31 Frank Public Art unveiled a work by local artist Frederico Archuleta that addressed the SXSW tragedy. A pair of helping hands with a message in wristbands. On the right wrist are the words “help heal the hurt” and on the left wrist are bands bearing the names DeAndre, Sandy, Steven and Jamie. At the unveiling, Northcutt wept. “That’s when it hit me, what happened,” he said. “When I saw the names, my emotions took over.” Grief is on its own timetable.
The victims were a couple who moved to Austin to start their married lives together, a pair of high school sweethearts who took a road trip from Fort Worth, a young woman who moved here from Mississippi to finish her studies at the University of Texas, and a new father from Amsterdam whose career in the music business was starting to take off. Their ages ranged from 18- 35, like a demographic, which is fitting because they represent us. Jamie, DeAndre, Sandy, Steven: four people, so loved, who had lives of such promise ahead.
We got a name the morning after. Rashad Owens, a wannabe hip hop producer from Killeen, was the sociopath who’d do anything, without the slightest regard to anyone else, to not spend the night in jail. And now he’s in prison for the rest of his life, found guilty of capital murder. He was drunk, blowing 0.114, and also had smoked marijuana, but prosecutors convinced the jury that Owens knew exactly what he was doing.
Owens was a dabbler in the rap game, not even known in Killeen, but his status was elevated by the American Statesman continually referring to him as a “musician.” But neither the Facebook page nor the Twitter account of Owens or his “K.A.B. 254” hip hop du plume had any mention of shows at SXSW. A hip hop artist not hyping their shows on social media?! Owens was a musician like the kid at 7-11 who sold you a hot dog is a chef.
At the trial, a manager at Club 1808- a venue at 12th and Chicon without ties to SXSW- said Owens had signed up for a 1 a.m. slot. Owens told a friend he needed to get some CDs out of his car, but instead drove the Honda Civic downtown, intending to pick up two other members of his Strictly Mafioso crew. Owens fancied himself a producer, not a rapper.
Driving west on E. 12th without his lights on, Owens was pulled over by police at the Shell station on the freeway access road. Instead of stopping, however, Owens squeezed his ride through a space between cars that was too small for the police cruiser. Then Owens gunned the car the wrong way up one-way Ninth Street. He turned right at Red River, crashing the barricade and plowing through a milling crowd without ever hitting his brakes. Bodies were thrown in the air like rag dolls. After two blocks on Red River, Owens turned left on 10th and crashed the car. After a short foot pursuit, he was tased twice, and taken into custody.
At around the time Owens was leaving 12th and Chicon, the Austin Music Awards was into its finale: an all-hands-on-stage romp of Doug Sahm’s “She’s About a Mover.” It had become Margaret’s theme song during her long goodbye from cancer- four years between the diagnosis and her death in 2017. Margaret was given a painting by Frederico Archuleta with a ribbon around the heart that said “Margaret Moser - Heart of the City.” What happened half an hour later gave Archuleta his next subject.
Live every day like it’s your last- and one day you’ll be right. Death comes in an instant, without any time to prepare. Or it comes when it’s supposed to, with room to reflect about our time on Earth.
The way we felt when we heard the news on March 14, 2014 about the despicable actions of a lone psychopath told us nothing if not that we’re all in this together.
A touching tribute.
This event hit me hard. Working for the Red Cross I have been involved in many mass casualty events. But this was SXSW, an event I attended every year and many of my friends were involved. The Red Cross was able to support by helping reconnect our foreign visitors with their families back home. SXSW also pulled us in to help them decide the most equitable way to distribute financial assistance to those directly impacted. They did such an admirable job working through the stress and heartbreak. It has been ten years, but sometimes it feels like yesterday.