The Burning Man man burns on the playa
The man has burned during Burning Man on the Black Rock Desert playa on Aug. 30, 2025.
A man was found dead Saturday night at Burning Man in an apparent homicide, the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office said Sunday.
A number of deaths have occurred at or near Burning Man since the event moved to the Black Rock Desert in 1990. Among them:
Michael Fury, 1996: Michael Fury of San Francisco died hours before the 1996 event began, the seventh year it was held in the Black Rock Desert. Fury, riding on a motorcycle, was struck and killed by a van just outside the gates. The van was being driven by an acquaintance of Fury’s.
“They were kind of frenemies, chest bumping, ego, super competitive,” Burning Man co-founder John Law told the RGJ in 2016.
“Michael was about a half mile ahead, driving around in circles around the van and then driving straight toward the van, kinda playing chicken,” Law said. “It was after sunset. But still slightly light. He was driving about 30 mph and Fury kept making passes at him, and the last one he made a miscalculation and hit the side of the van.”
Katherine Lampman, 2003: Katherine Lampman of San Mateo, California, was killed when she attempted to get off an “art car” and was run over by a trailing vehicle at Burning Man in 2003. Pershing County sheriff’s officials determined the fatality was an accident.
“Her last words to me were, `I’m going to live my life as if every day were my last,'” her sister, Stacy Levi, told the RGJ in 2003.
When friends tried to cancel the trip days before departure, Levi said she suggested that Lampman not go.
“I said, `Everything happens for a reason.’ But no, she would not hear of it, so I left it alone,” Levi said.
Barry Jacobs, 2003: Hours after Lampman’s death, four people were critically injured as their small plane tried to land at the festival’s airstrip in the Black Rock Desert.
Barry Jacobs of San Rafael, California, the pilot of the Beechcraft BE-35 airplane, later died of his injuries.
Jermaine Barley, 2007: Jermaine “Jerm” Barley died by suicide inside a tent at the 2007 event.
Barley, who went by the DJ name Optic Orange, was 22. Pershing County Sheriff Ron Skinner said Barley had been distraught, according to relatives, but they didn’t believe he would harm himself.
“If he wasn’t spinning records, or talking about girls, he was talking about Burning Man,” Barley’s former roommate Joe Harrington told the San Francisco Chronicle in 2007. “He loved everything about the place: the art, the freedom of expression, that it was a place to go be yourself and not worry about anything.”
Alicia Cipicchio, 2014: Alicia Louise Cipicchio, a manager of an art gallery in Jackson, Wyoming, was killed after she was hit by an art car at the 2014 event.
Cipicchio, an art student at the University of North Carolina, Greensboro, graduated in 2008 and was described as someone who loved the outdoors and loved life, a co-worker told the RGJ.
An employee with Cipicchio’s gallery said Cipicchio was an “amazing girl, full of life, loved by everybody.”
Aaron Joel Mitchell, 2018: Aaron Joel Mitchell, 41, died after he ran into the Burning Man structure fire on the Saturday night of the event. He was pronounced dead at 6:28 a.m. Sunday after being flown to the University of California-Davis burn center.
Mitchell, 41, was at his first Burning Man, according to his mother, Johnnye Mitchell. She said her son grew up in McAlester, Oklahoma, but was living in Switzerland with his wife.
The entire week of the event, he was abstaining from any drug use and only drank modest amounts of craft beer, his friend Justin Berry told the RGJ. He often meditated, and he’d make smoothies for all of his campmates, weary from the hottest year of Burning Man that anyone could recall.
On the night of the “Man” burn, however, Mitchell separated from his usual group to join some friends from Switzerland, Berry said.
“I wish we had all been together, I don’t know that this would have happened,” he said.
Leon Reece, 2023: Leon Reece of Truckee was found unresponsive and was administered CPR. Rainy, muddy conditions at the 2023 event did not appear to be a contributing factor in the death, according to the Pershing County Sheriff’s Office, but rain and tough conditions on the playa that night made it difficult for deputies to arrive and begin their investigation. By the time deputies arrived, a doctor at Burning Man had declared Reece dead.
Drug intoxication was suspected in his death, according to preliminary investigation by the Washoe County Regional Medical Examiner’s Office.
Kendra Frazer, 2024: Kendra Frazer, 39, was found unresponsive at on the first day of last year’s event. Burning Man’s emergency services personnel attempted lifesaving measures but were unsuccessful, according to a statement released by the organization.
Frazer died of an asthma attack in her sleep, her longtime partner, Sean Lupher, told the Reno Gazette Journal. The Washoe County Medical Examiner confirmed the cause.
