In our report of Gym Class Heroes vocalist Travis McCoy getting into an altercation with a fan at yesterday's Warped Tour stop, I cited a journal entry written by someone right at the barrier. Here’s an exclusive eyewitness account from that journaler, 20-year-old Brianna Dworsack of Peoria, Illinois.
Annie Zaleski: So, what exactly happened? Brianna Dworsack: Basically, we were on the barrier. This guy pushed his way up to the front, and he starts yelling this stuff at Travis. And I’m looking at him, like, I can’t believe this guy is coming to a Gym Class Heroes set and yelling this. And then Travis notices that he’s yelling and he goes, “Oh, excuse me?” The guy keeps yelling and Travis stops and goes, “Did you just call me an ignorant nigger?” And the guy is like, “Yeah,” and so Travis tellis him to jump the barricade, and the guy jumps the barricade and he goes up to the stage.
What I saw is that Travis leaned down to take his hand and pull him up onstage, and the guy wouldn’t take his hand. And thar was when Travis hit him. But I guess the guy hit him in the leg, first. And Travis had been walking around with a cane, so..
Did he have a cane onstage at the show? I don’t think he had the cane when he came onstage, but they had played an acoustic set earlier that day in the MySpace tent, and when they were leaving, he had a cane when he was walking out.
How old was the guy, was he old, young? I guess he probably looked like he was in his mid-twenties…he looked to me like he was biracial, because he was about the same skin tone as me or Travis. And I’m biracial too. He had big hair, a big fro.
How early in the set was this? This was only one song into the set, it ws really early. And, Travis had been making jokes about, like, “Ladies, put your hands in the air, somebody’s having my baby tonight.” He makes jokes like that all the time. And so the guy in the crowd was yelling like, “Oh, you want to make jokes about getting people pregnant?” I don’t know what that guy’s problem with Travis was.
When the incident went down, what were people’s reactiosn in the pit? Mostly people were cheering. After security pulled them apart, the guy ran to the side of the stage and he was being chased by security it looked like. The whole crowd was cheering, every time Travis would apologize, everybody was cheering for him. The whole response I’ve seen, is just like, he was completely within his rights to hit this guy.
