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Crowd surfer has broken neck after incident at Welcome to Rockville, family says

UPDATE: Community rallies behind dad hurt while crowd surfing during Welcome to Rockville

UPDATE, May 1: The injured crowd surfer has been identified as Chris Martin. Martin has a broken neck, his daughter said.

Martin initially thought it was an accident., but he knows believes he was thrown intentionally.

The family has set up a PayPal link to assist in his hospital expenses.

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A crowd surfer was seriously hurt during the Welcome to Rockville music festival.

Two Jacksonville Fire and Rescue Department sources told Action News Jax an ambulance was called out on Saturday night.

Avenged Sevenfold paused their set after the man was injured.

“He stopped the show and said, 'Everybody just make way. A broken neck is no joke,'” said witness Joshua Campbell.

Witnesses told Action News Jax the crowd parted to make a path for the ambulance.

Multiple festival-goers said they heard a crowd surfer suffered a spinal cord injury.

“They had him on a stretcher. They had a brace around his neck, so he obviously had a neck injury,” said witness Shaun McGaughey.

Festival-goers may have gotten conflicting messages about crowd surfing at the event.

The Welcome to Rockville website says crowd surfing is “prohibited,” but signs at the event said crowd surfing was “strongly discouraged.”

“It was pretty scary to see, basically because you have so many people crowd surfing. You’re all the time having to turn around to watch out for them,” said McGaughey.

A photo posted by Avenged Sevenfold on Facebook shows multiple people crowd surfing during their set, right in front of security guards.

Some festival-goers are saying the crowd surfer has a broken back, not a broken neck as originally thought.

Action News Jax will continue working to find out how he’s doing.

The concert organizer has not responded to Action News Jax’s questions.