STROUDSBURG -- Police say several concert-goers were taken to the emergency room after a show Friday night at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg.
Police believe they all overdosed on the designer drug known as “molly”.
It was a concert known as the Barstool Blackout Tour that led to several people going to the emergency room after a Friday night event at the Sherman Theater in Stroudsburg.
Police believe those concert-goers overdosed on the designer drug known as “molly”, a form of ecstasy.
Many of those who went were East Stroudsburg students, including freshman Julia Mead and sophomore Megan Meihofer who said security was tight.
“Yeah, there was people that, they would come up to the door and if you were too sloppy or falling all over, they would be like 'no.' They would just sent you home,” said Mead.
“They were going through everyone, like you had to empty out your pockets, they searched you, you couldn't get anything in,” said Meihofer.
Rich Berkowitz is the owner of the Sherman Theater and says “molly” is known to turn up at these types of dance parties. He says he always has security in place to prevent drugs or those intoxicated from getting inside his business, including last Friday.
“We have people trained looking for molly. We invited the Stroud Area Regional Police Quality of Life Team, who was in our building and all around it outside,” said Berkowitz. “We hire our own EMT staff to come in to be ready and available should somebody need assistance, which they did not, inside our building.”
Berkowitz says roughly 1,800 people were at the event Friday night, but says 125 others were turned away because they appeared to be intoxicated or under the influence of a substance. Berkowitz believes those were the ones taken to the hospital.
“I would say at least 85 percent of them, if not 100 percent of them weren't in the Sherman, they wanted to be in but they weren't.”
Berkowitz say he had hosted these types of dance events at the Sherman since 2005.
He feels molly is gaining more attention because police have started coming down more aggressively on the drug.