NEW ALBANY. (WAVE) - Thursday was the first booth day of the 2025 Harvest Homecoming and while festival organizers are hoping for another great year, many guests have safety at the top of their minds.

Opening day of Harvest Homecoming brought out huge crowds, but also saw the rollout of security changes brought on in part because of the deadly shooting at the 2024 festival when two groups at odds with each other got into a shoot-out that left three bystanders caught in the crossfire. One of them, 18-year-old Corydon Central student Bryce Gerlach, was killed by a stray bullet.

Five people have been charged in connection to that shooting.

As a result, organizers have a new safety plan for 2025, adding more defined perimeters and police presence to ensure another tragedy won’t happen.

“We

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