Di­rec­tor of the Lol­labee Group of Com­pa­nies, Shel­don Stephen, says over $60,000 worth of his com­pa­ny’s light­ing equip­ment was dam­aged by an irate pa­tron who stormed the stage of the One Caribbean Mu­sic Fes­ti­val at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, ear­ly on Sun­day morn­ing.

In a video, which has been cir­cu­lat­ing on so­cial me­dia af­ter the con­cert, the woman was seen walk­ing on­to the stage de­spite protests from an­oth­er woman off-cam­era.

The woman kicked speak­ers, be­fore knock­ing over lights and oth­er de­vices as tech­ni­cians tried to block her from oth­er pieces of equip­ment.

An­oth­er video of the event showed the woman cov­er­ing her face with a red ban­dan­na, be­fore leav­ing the stage.

Po­lice con­firmed the woman re­mained at large as of yes­ter­day af­ter­noon.

Stephen’s com­pa­ny pro­vid­ed the light­ing for the event and is urg­ing con­cert-go­ers in the fu­ture not to take out their frus­tra­tions on ser­vice providers, as he said they had noth­ing to do with or­gan­is­ing events or the book­ing of artistes.

Speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia, Stephen added that he was al­so dis­ap­point­ed in what he claimed was a “low turnout” of po­lice of­fi­cers for the event. He lament­ed that the woman was al­lowed to storm the stage and dam­age the prop­er­ty un­chal­lenged.

Re­fer­ring to promis­es from po­lice that there would be a heavy pres­ence at the venue, Stephen said from his own ob­ser­va­tions there was no sig­nif­i­cant turnout of of­fi­cers.

“While she was run­ning to the back she kicked a speak­er and pushed over a case con­tain­ing equip­ment and then she just walked out the venue from the back. So my ques­tion was ‘where was the po­lice in this whole 20-minute fi­as­co?’

“The Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er or the As­sis­tant Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, one of them said pri­or to the event start­ed they would have a heavy po­lice pres­ence, but that’s left to be seen.

“Po­lice are paid sep­a­rate­ly to at­tend events, they are not at­tend­ing an event through their salary, it’s an ad­di­tion­al pay they get so I think they need to take that job a lit­tle more se­ri­ous­ly.”

Stephen said he stayed dur­ing an ear­ly por­tion of the event but was not present when the van­dal­ism hap­pened. He said he was im­me­di­ate­ly con­tact­ed by em­ploy­ees.

He al­so urged con­cert-go­ers to be mind­ful that ser­vice providers were not re­spon­si­ble for the or­gan­i­sa­tion of events and the book­ing of acts.

While he ac­knowl­edged that some pa­trons would be dis­ap­point­ed in the ab­sence of head­line act Vy­bz Kar­tel (Adid­ja Palmer) he main­tained that they did not have a right to dam­age equip­ment that did not be­long to them.

“We are just hired to do a job. We have noth­ing to do with the pro­mot­er oth­er than be­ing hired, we have noth­ing to do with Kar­tel com­ing, we were booked to do a job.

“She (the sus­pect) re­al­ly made an un­in­tel­li­gent move, be­cause why would you come on a pub­lic stage where there’s so much footage of you and so much footage of you dam­ag­ing the equip­ment?

“So what are you go­ing to tell a Judge when you get in­to court? You’re go­ing to say, ‘I mash up $60,000 in equip­ment be­cause Kar­tel didn’t come?’ That equip­ment didn’t have any­thing to do with Kar­tel not com­ing.”

He con­firmed that among the dam­aged com­po­nents were two high-pow­ered mov­ing heads for lights which re­tail at US$3,500 each and a rack.