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OFF THE RAILS at Woodstock '99: How rioting fans, 'male toxicity' and sexual assaults caused concert tragedy

'All I can say is I thought I was going to die. It started off great...and then... it got insane. Nightfall and the prisoners were officially running the prison,' recalled TV host Carson Daly

ROME, NEW YORK: TV host Carson Daly said that the Woodstock '99 was "male toxicity at its finest", and recalled how he thought he was going to die at the music festival. The horrors of have been revealed in a new Netflix docuseries, titled 'Trainwreck: Woodstock '99'. Daly went to cover the music festival in upstate New York by MTV in 1999. The night was tainted with violence and vandalism, with fans tearing plywood from the walls during a performance of the song 'Break Stuff'. In the aftermath of the concert, several sexual assaults were reported. The documentary aired on Netflix on August 3

A man named David DeRosia collapsed in the mosh pit during the Metallica performance and later died. The autopsy report ruled the death as accidental. It also listed the cause of death to be hyperthermia, along with an enlarged heart and obesity. Two other deaths were reported during the 1999 music festival, including a 44-year-old who "succumbed to the heat", and a 28-year-old woman who was hit by a car while walking along the road after the concert was over. Dozens of people were also hospitalized.

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At the time, the band's vocalist, Fred Durst, stated during the concert, "Don't let anybody get hurt. But I don't think you should mellow out. That's what Alanis Morissette had you moth********* do. If someone falls, pick 'em up." He also said during the performance of the band's song 'Nookie', "We already let all the negative energy out. It's time to reach down and bring that positive energy to this moth********. It's time to let yourself go right now, 'cause there are no mot*******in' rules out there."

Daly, now 49, was 26 at the time. He reported from the festival for MTV. In the documentary, Daly can be seen pelted with garbage and plastic bottles at the concert. He recently admitted on Instagram that he thought he was going "to die". "All I can say is I thought I was going to die. It started off great...and then started getting pelted with bottles, rocks, lighters, all of it," he said. "It got insane. Nightfall and the prisoners were officially running the prison. My boss Dave says to our staff/crew backstage: 'We can no longer guarantee your safety."

"I remember being in a production van driving recklessly through corn fields to get to safety. It was so crazy and a blur now," he added. "I just remember feeling like I was in another country in a military conflict. I have so many fun memories from that era, this was not one of them."

Daly told colleagues at the Today show that the music frstival was "male toxicity at its worst". "Everything that could have gone wrong did. It was male toxicity at its worst... it was unhealthy," Daly said. 

In a shocking incident at the event, the crowd commandeered a van and drove it through the mosh-pit during Fatboy Slim's performance Police later opened the van and found an unconscious girl inside, with a man standing over her, adjusting his pants. She is said to have been raped in the back of the vehicle.

Various lawsuits were filed against the festival and were settled privately. However, nobody has been criminally charged. Police investigated several incident of rape and sexual assault but it is unclear is anyone was ultimately arrested. 

"At least two women were raped in the mosh pit at Woodstock '99 last weekend, according to a volunteer who witnessed one assault and a rape counselor involved in assisting the victim in the other," an MTV report from 1999 said, according to the Daily Mail. "In each incident, which occurred on different nights of the three-day, 30th-anniversary Woodstock '99 festival, the woman was allegedly raped and assaulted by multiple men, as concert-goers around the crime cheered her assailants on."

"Meanwhile, the internal-investigations office of the New York State Police in Albany announced Wednesday that the on-site trooper-supervisor was suspended without pay following accusations he urged female Woodstock attendees to pose nude for photos with police, Jamie Mills, director of public information, said. The investigation is continuing," it added. "While New York State Police have been vague about reports of sexual-assault cases at Woodstock, officials finally confirmed Thursday (July 29) that they are investigating four alleged rapes said to have occurred during the outdoor concert held on the former Griffiss Air Force base in Rome, N.Y."