Travis Scott’s show during Astroworld Festival in Houston ended up with a stampede and eight deaths. Visitors struggled to escape the surge and get oxygen. Still, the wall of people kept pressing towards the stage, causing others to pass out.
More than 50 people needed emergency care. Injuries included overdose, heat exhaustion, alcohol poisoning, and compressive asphyxiation. Hundreds of people also reported to the festival’s field hospitals with injuries.
Travis Scott kept performing for 40 minutes after the first injury reports came. He also allegedly said, “Who asked me to stop? You know what you came here to do,” to one of the fans. The next day, Scott expressed his condolences and claimed to be “devastated” on social media.
Authorities are currently investigating the incident as a criminal case. Below is a timeline of the Astroworld stampede, with the presently obtained information.
Before Astroworld
At approximately 2 PM in the afternoon, a crowd pushing through the VIP gates started arriving at the festival. Eventually, rushing people also destroyed the metal detectors.
The Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña told CNN, “We do know we had people jump the fence,” and reported on one injured person. However, Peña doesn’t know what caused the surge.
The New York Times source says Houston Police Chief Troy Finner then paid a visit to Travis Scott. Finner expressed his “concerns about the energy in the crowd.” The next day he would say at the press conference, “Our people stepped up and immediately went to the producers and told them, ‘Hey, people are going down.'”
Half an hour before Astroworld
Around half an hour before the show, a countdown timer began.” And all of a sudden, people compressed up against each other and were pushing forward and backward. As the timer got closer to coming down to zero, it just — it got worse and worse,” ICU nurse Madeline Eskins said.
“Little did we know, all hell was about to break loose. People started to pass out and fall to the ground,” concertgoer Jeffrey Schmidt told CNN. He and his friend decided to get out of the crowd as the countdown moved to zero.
Minutes into Astroworld
Once Scott took over the stage, the audience began surging front and back. “The crowd became tighter and tighter, and at that point, it was hard to breathe. When Travis came out, performing his first song, I witnessed people passing out next to me,” the show visitor TK Tellez said.
“I truly thought that if I fell, it would’ve been the end of me. I spent at least 15 minutes just getting pushed around due to mosh pits or simply because people were raging,” another visitor Sarai Sierra said. Sierra came to the show for her birthday. She also saw other people were unable to breathe.
Thirty minutes into Astroworld
Officials received the first reports of crowd injuries. They also “Requested additional resources to the scene,” according to Peña.
Videos are also circulating on social media, with people preventing EMS from entering the crowd. In particular, while some kept surging, others climbed on the cars with emergency lights on. Travis Scott kept performing.
Thirty-eight minutes into Astroworld
Peña says a “mass casualty event” was declared eight minutes after the first reports. “From the time that the mass casualty incident was declared, to the first unit on scene, was two minutes when we began to make patient contact,” he said.
Some were trying to scream for help, but the music was too loud. “Travis Scott would have a short time in between songs, and we would scream our vocal cords out, so someone could hear us, but nobody did,” Tellez said.
Scott allegedly responded to requests of pausing the show with, “Who asked me to stop? You know what you came here to do.” However, he also saw the ambulance cars and stopped performing in confusion, live report shows.
The rapper said on his Instagram video the next day, “Any time I could make out, you know, anything that’s going on, you know, I just stopped my show and, you know, helped them get the help they need.”
Finner also said there was a “discussion between promoters, the fire department, the police department, and NRG officials” about stopping the event.
Forty minutes after Astroworld Stampede
According to the Houston mayor, Astroworld Festival was over at around 10:10 PM. One of the concertgoers claims his watch indicated “10:13 or 10:14 p.m.” by the end of the event.
Written by Nikita Serdiuk
