‘People Are Dying’: Witnesses Describe the Horror of Astroworld Tragedy in Houston
Fans screamed for help and made pleas to “stop the show” amid a crowd surge during Travis Scott’s Astroworld Fest set Friday night that left at least eight people dead and hundreds more injured.
Following the incident, accounts and video flooded onto social media about what people experienced during the stampede-like atmosphere, as well as the futile attempts to stop the concert in order to allow the injured people — trapped within the mass of people — receive the help they required.
Madeline Eskins, an attendee and an ICU nurse, told Rolling Stone on Saturday morning, “It was definitely overcrowded. It was insane, honestly. I knew it was just way too crowded – it just got worse and worse as i got closer to Travis Scott performing it got more crowded, more crowded, more crowded.”
“Fans were recording the concert and people doing CPR,” Eskins added. “Fans were yelling at the stage crew around us, saying stop the concert, people are dying. No one listened.”
Eskins also shared her account of what she witnessed on social media:
In some instances, festival-goers climbed onto the risers where the cameras filming Scott’s set — which streamed live on Apple Music — and pleaded with the crew to communicate to someone that the concert needed to be halted. Video from the incident shows the crew ignoring those efforts, while some in the crowd mocked the pleas for help.
As one attendee (@seannafaith) wrote on Instagram, “We began to scream to help. We could see security, just a few people away, in the walkway in the middle. It got tighter. Impossible to breath, as our lungs were compressed between the bodies of those surrounding us. More people began screaming for help, but we were not heard. There was nowhere to go.”
@seannafaith also claimed they were among the people who climbed the camera platform to inform the cameraperson that people needed help. “I climbed the ladder and pointed at the hole, telling him people were dying,” they wrote. “He told me to get off the platform, and continued filming.”
Video also emerged of Scott witnessing at least one unconscious fan being carried out of the area near the side of the stage; the rapper continued performing:
As for allegations, reported by TMZ, that the crowd surge was sparked by someone “injecting” people with drugs, Eskins said, “People around me were sober. They’re trying to say it was drugs. The only thing i saw was people around smoking weed and people around me were not doing that.”
Authorities said the “mass casualties event” took place at approximately 9:38 p.m. during Scott’s headlining set Friday. “The crowd for whatever reason began to push and surge towards the front of the stage, which caused the people in the front to be compressed,” Peña said. “They were unable to escape that situation.”
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EJ Dickson, Khareem Sudlow
