A man had his ear bitten off at an Eagles Of Death Metal gig in Toronto last weekend.
The band were performing live at Toronto’s Opera House on Saturday night (May 7) when the incident took place. The first report of the shocking moment came from the band’s drummer, Jorma Vik. He wrote that a man “got his ear bitten off,” in a now-deleted Facebook post. “First time for everything I guess!”
Athena Ellinas-Towers, general manager of the Opera House, later confirmed that this had happened. “I didn’t witness anything, but there was a confrontation between two individuals,” she told aux.tv. “The one gentleman that instigated the whole thing was arrested and charged. I’m not sure of the charges; I just saw him being arrested. The police haven’t followed up with me yet. We called them because this is a serious offence.”
Ellinas-Towers added that a female member of the crowd picked the loose ear up off the ground and handed it to staff at the venue, who kept it on ice until paramedics arrived. “This is a first,” she said. “I didn’t actually believe it when someone came up to me and told me what happened.”
Photographer Gary William Ogle was at the gig and shared this decidedly graphic image of the ear on Instagram.
Eagles of Death Metal return to Europe in August for a string of dates that include Reading & Leeds Festival, Pukkelpop and Rock En Seine.
The band made their live return in February, three months after terrorists targeted their show at the Le Bataclan theatre in Paris, where 89 people were killed at the band’s gig. On their return they performed in the French capital for a concert at the Olympia venue and around 900 survivors of the Bataclan terror attack were present, having been invited by the band to attend the gig for free.
Last month (March) Jesse Hughes had to backtrack on comments he made about the Paris attacks, after alleging that security guards at the Bataclan venue had prior knowledge of what was going to happen.