Gay Pride Houston last year: towards the end of the parade, maybe 8:00, I literally stumbled upon a girl who was not in a good way. I was 21, she was maybe 25? She was sitting on a curb in the street with her head between her legs. The parade had gotten so completely out of hand at this point; people had broken through the barricades and were now running in the streets, gabbing the parade marchers, yanking beads away, jumping on floats. The girl was going to get hurt by them, so I jumped over the partition to help her move before they ran her over. She didn't look good--she was foaming at the mouth, choking, and her eyes were glassy and sightless and her skin was cold and bloodless. I tried to get her name out of her but she couldn't tell me; I tried to move her but she couldn't walk. I grabbed a few friends, and one called 911 while the other asked her questions. In the parking lot behind us, someone let the water out of the massive pool people had been using to cool off. The water rushed towards us, picking up the filth and debris of the parking lot with it. As it flooded the gutter the girl sat in, I jumped back, but at that moment, the girl lost consciousness and passed out face first into the water. I leapt back into the stream and scooped her up bodily, screaming for help. Several people in the crowd jumped the partition to lift her out of the street. We stumbled with over to a median of grass, shoving people to the ground when they wouldn't move. We laid the girl in the grass, and poured water on her to revive her. She came to, trying to tell us to find her girlfriend, but she couldn't give us a name. We handed her a cell and told her to call her girlfriend but she couldn't dial the phone. She passed out after a few minutes. It took the ambulance half an hour to get through the crowd. Nobody would get out of the ****ing way, no matter how much we screamed and begged them to move, just move! The paramedics finally got to us, and strapped her up and took her away, but not before taking my friend's number in case we found the girl's girlfriend. They took her away, but I can't even imagine how long it took them to travel five miles to St. Lukes. I never hear whether the girl makes it or not. Flash-forward a year. I wake up today dreading Gay Pride. What a horrible time I had last year! Still, I live a block away, so to get to the store I had to walk right through it. I see my friends from last year, sitting in the same spot. They invite me for a beer and we get to talking. I bring up the girl. My friend tells me, "Yeah, she died. She didn't make it. The hospital called me about four hours later to let me know that she had passed." That was about an hour ago. Now I'm awash with emotions. I'm confused and uncertain--I don't know if my friend is lying to beef up the story (a terrible thing to do but not unheard of. I hope she's lying). I'm enraged--why didn't those people move? Why did my community have to act like such animals? Why did they not understand the severity of the situation? Did they really have to stand in the streets like jerk-offs? I feel helpless and guilty; is there something more I could have done? How much water did she swallow in that puddle? Could I have dove in faster? Should I have done cpr? Should I have spend more time calling the police and less time trying to get information from her? I wonder how she died. Did she regain consciousness? Was she in pain? Did she ever have a coherent thought again after passing out? Did she realize how much she drank? Was she drugged? Was I one of the last people to see her alive? I can't find any information about deaths in google news about Houston Gay Pride '08, but I noticed last year that there was a complete blackout in the press regarding how badly the event went; not even Houston Free Press talked about the drugs and the rioting. My boyfriend doesn't understand how shaken up I am by this, my mother doesn't think it's a big deal, and my friend who got the phone call has had a year to process this information. I feel alone. Am I making a bigger deal of this than I should? I just want to know if she's dead, and if she is, how to cope with it.