On Friday, about 50,000 people attended a sold-out Astroworld Festival in Houston, where disaster struck at around 9 p.m CT. At least eight people were killed and scores of others were injured in the chaos, officials said.
As reported by CNN, the victims were 14, 16, two were 21, two were 23 and one was 27 years old, while one of the victim’s ages remains unknown, Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner announced in a news conference Saturday evening,
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Turner Said “Over the next several days, several weeks, we’ll take an in-depth look at everything that took place, why it took place, what steps we can take moving forward to mitigate an incident of this kind from taking place.”
The tension began increasing minutes before Travis Scott’s performance, people there described how they started feeling crushed and seeing others pass out. “Once (Scott) started, all hell broke loose,” concert-goer Alexis Guavin, 23, told CNN. “All of what is to be 50,000 people ran to the front, compressing everyone together with the little air available.”
A video from the event showed the performer pausing his show, staring out at the crowd, and ask “Wtf is that?”, confused when seeing an ambulance with flashing lights trying to get through the crowd.
Scott stopped the show at least three times to ask for help for stricken concertgoers, audience members Nick Johnson and Angel Rodriguez told CNN. But event security and Houston police were the ones to put an actual stop to the concert “as soon as the situation got to the point where it was overwhelming the resources there,” Peña, the fire chief, said.
Investigators will review the video of the scene and look at how the venue was laid out and whether it had enough exit points, Peña said.
The investigation will explore “what caused, one, the issue of the crowd surge, and two, what prevented people from being able to escape that situation,” Peña said.
The horrible events on Friday brought an early end to the two-day event, Saturday’s portion was canceled. The company that was responsible for organizing the event, Live Nation, issued a statement saying they were “heartbroken for those lost and impacted,” and that they would do whatever was possible to “provide as much information to the local authorities as they investigate the situation.
