Safety expert says Limp Bizkit were partly to blame for festival tragedy

Limp Bizkit have been partly blamed for a crowd collapse at a rock festival in which a young fan was crushed and later died.

Safety consultant Michael Upton says the band's failure to stop playing when asked contributed to the tragedy.

Lawyers for the band plan to call another crowd safety expert to contradict Mr Upton's evidence.

Jessica Michalik, 16, suffered a heart attack in the moshpit crush at the Big Day Out festival in Sydney in January. She died in hospital five days later.

The Sydney Telegraph reports Mr Upton told an inquest in Sydney the Big Day Out security team had repeatedly asked Limp Bizkit to stop playing. He said: "In my opinion the failure by Limp Bizkit to stop their performance was a contributing factor to the time taken to remove persons from the audience."

He said people caught underneath a crowd collapse could die within seconds. "If you were a victim of a vertical load, you really have got very little chance, particularly in an environment where it's very dark and very noisy."

Mr Upton said Limp Bizkit frontman Fred Durst had provoked the security team "to the limit" during the crisis.

He said Durst's comments to the audience that "these guys won't help you, look after yourselves" were "unhelpful and grossly unfair." He added: "At some concerts he would have found he had no pit crew, they would have walked out and said 'You're on your own.' They were provoked to the limit."

Durst also told the crowd to "chill out," telling fans "things are getting a little out of hand".

Mr Upton said security staff extracted Jessica from the moshpit as quickly as possible and had prevented further casualties. In his opinion, Limp Bizkit had "absolute" influence over the crowd.