What promised to be one of the best parties of his life ended in his death. Carlos David Ruiz, 25 years old, attended the Baum Festival last Friday, May 24, the most important electronic party in Bogotá. When leaving the event, early Saturday morning, he received a call that separated him from his friends. He told them that he would go away for a moment, but he did not return. His body was found almost 36 hours later, on Sunday afternoon, in a water tank in Corferias, the fairgrounds in the Colombian capital where the festival took place.
Carlos David Ruiz was born in Valledupar, in the Caribbean department of Cesar, and moved to Bogotá shortly before the pandemic to study Business Administration at the Javeriana University. Once graduated, he worked at BRS International Latam, a company specialized in insurance and reinsurance.
His father, Álvaro Ruiz, is already in Bogotá. In a telephone conversation with this newspaper, he remembers that his son “was very happy, jovial and responsible.” He played sports, went to the gym and rode his bicycle to work. He didn’t officially have a girlfriend, but he went out with several friends,” he says. “You don’t expect to bury your children. “You want them to bury you first,” he adds.
“I traveled from Valledupar on Saturday night when they informed me that he did not appear. My wife stayed, waiting for news,” she explains. He says that on the same Saturday she managed to speak with Hernán Cayetano, one of the founding partners of the Baum Festival. “I told him to check the facilities, the cameras, that he could have fallen asleep in a living room or a bathroom,” she says. He explains that the veteran DJ responded that he had no knowledge of what happened, but that he would give the order to start the search. “That was when I decided to activate the search with the Police,” he says.
In the end, the Prosecutor’s Office found Carlos’s body in a water tank. “The tanks have a lid with a small hole. It seems very strange to me that they haven’t seen anything before, a stream of water or anything. I don’t understand how it could have fallen there,” says Ruíz. Event organizers contacted him again on Sunday night. They asked him if he had found his son: “They called me to tell me that they had not found anything and that they were already traveling to Chile because they had another festival. I responded that the Prosecutor’s Office had already found it.”
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“I don’t think it’s a suicide. “He was a healthy boy,” he says, referring to versions that have circulated. “I will wait for the opinion of the Prosecutor’s Office,” he says, and explains that he has not seen the videos from the Corferias security cameras that show Carlos after he walked away from his friends. He says that, once they have the final results of the investigation, they will move the body to Valledupar, the city where he grew up. “For my part, I only want the truth,” Álvaro concludes.
“A good party should not end anyone’s life”
The authorities are investigating the facts and have not offered a hypothesis as to what happened, but rumors abound. Carlos David’s relatives ask, above all, for explanations. Juan David Quintero, Bogotá councilor for the New Liberalism party, is one of them. “He is the son of my dad’s cousin and on the coast, you know, we are very close,” he explains, before raising questions about him. “They sent me a photo of the tank, and I don’t know how it could get in there. It has a small slot where a hose fits,” he says. But, above all, he draws attention to how a person gets lost within Corferias. “The Baum Festival, knowing that many of my cousin’s friends informed the organizers that there was a missing person, continued with the party,” says the politician, referring to the fact that Carlos disappeared at the end of the first of the two nights of the festival.
“A good party should not end anyone’s life. Two years ago there was also a strange death around the festival,” the councilor tells this newspaper. In 2022, a young woman died after participating in the electronic music celebration. The Ministry of Health reported that this death was due to a serious condition “probably related to the consumption of psychoactive substances.” The family member continues: “Why are there no high-impact prevention protocols proportional to the risk? If there is a missing person, why do they delay until Sunday to check the cameras? If it is true that there is a video, why didn’t they see it on Saturday?
Miguel Santacoloma, Director of Communications of Páramo Presenta, the organizing company of the Baum Festival, responded to EL PAÍS that he nor any other member of the organization will give interviews until obtaining the final report from the Prosecutor’s Office. The only statement is a statement published this Sunday night on the festival’s Instagram account: “The Baum Festival organization deeply regrets the death of one of our attendees, who was found at the Corferias fairgrounds at midnight. afternoon of Sunday, May 26,” it reads.
The letter states that, according to the information up to that point, “this is not a case of physical violence and the occurrence of any type of crime is not suspected.” He concludes that they collaborate with the authorities “in all the requirements requested for the investigation.” While this investigation progresses, the mystery about the cause of death and what happened to the body remains for around 36 hours, many of them a few meters from where thousands of people were dancing and celebrating life.
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