HOUSTON- Eight concert-goers with ages ranging from 14-27 years old were killed Friday night during at crowd surge at the opening night of the popular, Astorworld Festival.
The incident reached its most dangerous around 9:15 p.m. It was at that time Houston Fire Cheif, Samuel Peña, said the crowd of approximately 50,000 concert-goers began to move towards the front of the stage.
“The crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage, and people began to panic,” said Peña.
It was reported that nearly 300 people were treated at a field hospital since the show began. Understandbly irate concert goers are beginning to speak out about the inidcent, one saying the event was like “drowning in quicksand.”
Other attendees described being crushed to the point of passing out. Many reported having their pleas for help ignored, and seeing overwhelmed medics struggle to evacuate bodies from the grounds.
This senseless tragedy is not the first incident to result from a Travis Scott concert. Don’t forget the rapper’s 2018 guilty plea after being charged with inciting a riot, disorderly conduct and endangering the welfare of a minor in May 2017 during his concert.
Houston officials stated Saturday afternoon that they were still investigating the tragedy and whether there were any “missteps” in the execution of the event.
Online rumors are circulating about drugs being the cause, however the Police Chief stated they only had evidence of one security guard being struck in the neck with a needle while trying to detain a festival attendee. The guard fell unconscious, then was revived with Narcan, a drug to reverse the effects of fentanyl.
Multiple eye-witness accounts are swirling online, each one heavy and heartbreaking.
“I was screaming, ‘Do something! People are dying!’ They put their hands up, like, What can we do?” attendee and ICU nurse, Madelin Eskins said in a statement from her Insagram account. Medical professionals working the event were so overhwlemed that they had to ask concert-goers to perform CPR.
In another Instagram post, an attendee named Seanna said people were packed in so tightly that they struggled to breathe as soon as Scott’s performance began.
“Within the first 30 seconds of the first song, people began to drown — in other people… The rush of people became tighter and tighter. Breathing became something only a few were capable of. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick hot air.”
If not for Travis Scott’s history and previous plea to the same acts that resulted in this weekend’s tragedy, one might chalk it up solely to unpreparedness, however, this is all-too familiar.
How far are performers like Scott willing to go to keep up the energy at their shows, or to maintain their fake “bad boy” personas for big paydays and popularity? This is not the first time people have been hurt as a result of Travis Scott’s performances, and this publication would rather not see him get the chance for a third incident to occur.
