8 people lost their lives – the youngest only 14 – at the Astroworld music festival held in Houston last Friday. At least 300 more were injured and are being tended to in nearby hospitals.
Details are continuing to surface thanks to video footage taken by attendees, but what is known right now is that the tragedy was caused by an alleged crowd surge that took place at approximately 9 pm, while Travis Scott was on stage.
As the crowd began to get more and more agitated and it became quickly evident that the venue could not sustain the number of attendees, concertgoers began to panic and fight for space to breathe.
Video footage shows boys, teenagers, and men frantically lifting lifeless bodies up and over the barricades in an attempt to get them some air and medical assistance.
Based on a number of reports from people who attended the festival, it became abundantly clear that the event promoters and planners had not hired sufficient security and medical staff to sustain the crowd and tend to health emergencies.
WARNING: The following videos and descriptions depict graphic, tragic events which may be disturbing for some readers.
One woman took to Instagram to retell her experience which was subsequently shared in a video on TikTok:
"It was awful. I passed out because people were pushing up against me so much that I couldn't breathe. [My boyfriend] apparently got people to crowd surf my unconscious body to the security guard. [...] When I woke up, I had a water bottle in my lap and had no clue what had happened. When I stood up I looked around and people were getting carried out with [their] eyes rolled back into their heads. [...] I yelled 'Has anybody checked a pulse!?' The security guard, frantic, asked me to please help him. I checked two people and one did not have a pulse. I told them I was an ICU nurse and then another security guard, hearing that, said 'please come help us.'"
SOURCE: https://www.tiktok.com/
Another video that has been shared hundreds of thousands of times shows a young man and woman climbing a camera rig, begging the cameraman for help.
If you listen carefully, you can hear the young girl scream “Someone's dead in there!”
Terrifyingly, the cameraman motions with his hand for them to get down and turns away.
Some have argued that Travis Scott had no way of knowing that these horrors were going on within the crowd, however thanks to the power of smartphones, several videos show Scott pointing out an ambulance in the crowd, and subsequently telling the audience “You know what you came here for. Let’s [censored] rage.”
Further, as things continued to get out of hand and people continued to get trampled, fans took it upon themselves to chant “stop the show” repeatedly to no avail.
Kylie Jenner, who is expecting her second baby with Scott, brought their first daughter Stormi to watch the show from the VIP section. In a story posted to Instagram by Jenner – which has since been deleted – the crowd can clearly be heard shouting to stop the show and that something is wrong. To make matters worse, Jenner’s video pans directly past an ambulance in the center of the crowd.
At this point in time, 14 civil lawsuits have been filed and there are bound to be more on the way. 10 name Travis Scott as the defendant, and one names Canadian rapper Drake, who was on stage throughout some of the tragedy.
