Monica said protecting and serving a female concertgoer who a male audience member attacked during a live concert was her main focus when she intervened.
While performing on Saturday at Hart Plaza in Detroit for Riverfront Music Festival — which she was headlining — the Grammy award-winning songstress stopped her performance to confront a man she saw punch a woman in the crowd. The altercation was captured on video. (The video below contains some profanity).
During a Monday interview with The Hollywood Report, the singer said she did everything she could to stop the assault.
“There was an altercation in the audience between a man and woman that I could tell from my viewpoint onstage,” Monica said. “It was heating up as I was attempting to get security’s attention to ask them to de-escalate it, and unfortunately, they weren’t able to fully understand what I was asking them to do. And I did everything I could after seeing him strike her to prevent her from being hit again.”
In the video, you can see Monica telling the man, ‘Don’t you hit her like that!” before jumping into the crowd. She asked security to remove the man and apologized to concertgoers for the incident afterward.
“It was very triggering for me to see a woman be assaulted by a man,” Monica said in the interview. “Thank God that we were able to prevent it from going further than it did and everyone made it home safe.”
She continued: “I would just want for people to start governing themselves a lot better when you’re in these crowded situations. When you go to festivals and concerts — it’s going to be a lot of people, it’s going to be a lot of touching, it’s going to be a lot of interaction and maybe uncomfortable moments, and those are things we have to prepare for and govern ourselves properly. It was only in my mind to protect and serve and be there for this woman that I could see from the stage.”
