Eight are killed and ‘hundreds’ injured at Travis Scott’s sold-out Astroworld Festival in Houston

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Travis Scott was filmed continuing to perform in between making calls for help after eight people were crushed to death and more than 300 were injured by a crush at Houston’s Astroworld Festival on Friday night. 

Distressing video showed an unconscious male concertgoer being rushed to a medical assistance area after he passed out in the crush, which happened after people surged towards the stage shortly after 9.15pm CST Friday night.

At least 23 people were rushed to a hospital, including a 10-year-old, police said. 

Meanwhile, Scott’s girlfriend Kylie Jenner, who attended the event, was blasted online for posting a clip of an ambulance tending to the injured and dead as the chaos unfolded. 

At one point fans were even recorded begging concert staff to halt the performance and help people escape the surge.   

‘People are f***ing dying, I want to save somebody’s life,’ a man said as he climbed on a platform where a cameraman was filming the performance.

‘That’s somebody’s kid! I want to save them!’ he screamed but to no avail.

Another clip showed the same man climbing up towards the cameraman joined by a woman pleading with the staff member to stop the concert.

Although inaudible, the cameraman was evidently trying to shoo the revelers off the platform and back into the crowd.

In yet another graphic video an unconscious young man was surrounded by Houston police officers who guided him onto the ground. They rolled the man onto his side while shining lights into his eyes.

Scott was seen in the background as he continued to perform from a platform feet above the crowd.

On Instagram a woman by the username @seannafaith claimed to be the person who climbed onto the cameraman’s platform to plead for help said that the crush was like a ‘Jenga tower topple,’ and added that fellow concertgoers were ‘drowning in people’. 

She detailed climbing onto the platform, which ‘looked directly into the crowd,’ and told him that ‘there were people dying’.

‘I screamed over and over again. He wouldn’t even look in the direction,’ the Instagrammer wrote. ‘He became angry,’ she added before noting that the cameraman then called on ‘someone else’ to whisk her off the 15-foot platform.

‘The other man grabbed my arm and told me he would push me off the platform with no sides if I didn’t get down,’ she recalled. 

‘Breathing became something only a few were capable of,’ she described, explaining that ‘the music continued’ as ‘the shoving got harder and harder…and people began to choke one another as the mass swayed’.

‘We knew there was a very big chance some of us would not make it out alive,’ she wrote in an Instagram post captioned: ‘I can’t write anymore. To all the lost souls tonight, you were robbed.’ 

The eight people who died have yet to be identified and police have asked those who have not heard from loved ones who attended the event to report to the local Wyndham Hotel where a ‘reunification center’ has been set up.

Police are reportedly working to identify the victims are are awaiting the medical examiner’s investigation to determine a cause of death.  

An estimated 50,000 people showed up for the two-day event, which was cancelled last year due to Covid. But Friday night’s show was called off after chaos broke out just after 9pm local time, and the music festival’s second day has now been scrapped.

Thousands of festivalgoers surged towards the stage while Scott was performing at NRG Park in Houston, leading to a crush. 

Jenner – who’s pregnant with her and Travis’s second child – was also watching his set alongside the pair’s three-year-old daughter Stormi.

A video Jenner shared to her Instagram story panning the crowd indicated that she was not near the front. The 24-year-old billionaire has since been slammed for the footage, which showed an emergency vehicle in the middle of the crowd.

There was no suggestion that Jenner or Stormi were injured. 

But the rap star reportedly stopped multiple times during his 75-minute performance when he spotted fans in distress near the front of the stage.  

‘Security. Somebody help, jump in real quick,’ Scott said. The bass continued to rumble as he continued: ‘Somebody jump in. C’mon c’mon.’ 

While it’s unclear whether security was able to assist in time more footage posted to social media showed fans begging the concert staff to halt the show. 

Before the surge even happened KTRK reported that hundreds of revelers – who did not appear to have tickets – stormed the event’s VIP entrance around 2pm local time on Friday.

Video showed the crowd of youngsters surging through metal detector arches, with at least one also seen jumping an adjoining fence.

Yet the stampede did not appear to be related to the multiple injuries Friday night and around seven hours later, at 9.15pm, the fatal surge took place, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Pena said, with people at the back pushing people in front of the main stage forward, crushing them against barriers.

Pena explained: ‘The crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage, and people began to panic.’ 

Harrowing footage on social media showed paramedics performing CPR on several people on the floor in the crowd. Seventeen people were taken to hospitals, with 11 of those in cardiac arrest, while others were treated at a field hospital in the park. 

It is feared that hundreds, including children as young as 10, were injured. Officials in Texas confirmed eight people were killed but insisted that the cause of death was unknown and urged people not to ‘speculate’ about the chain of events that sparked the tragedy.

‘We had at least eight confirmed fatalities tonight and scores of individuals that were injured,’ Pena said. 

‘The crowd began to compress towards the front of the stage, and that caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries. People began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic.’ 

In a disturbing livestream of the concert posted to Instagram people in the crowd can be heard screaming: ‘Help! Help me up Trav!’ 

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said of the tragic night: ‘I think it’s very important that none of us speculate. Nobody has all the answers tonight. If you don’t have facts, if you don’t have evidence, I’m not going to speak against that. We have hurting families out here.’ 

The deadly surge was the most deaths at a US concert since the 2003 Station nightclub fire that killed 100 people in Rhode Island.

Eleven people died and about two dozen were injured in 1979 at a concert for The Who as thousands of fans tried to get into Cincinnati’s riverfront coliseum.

Houston Police Executive Assistant Chief Larry Satterwhite said: ‘It happened all at once. 

‘It seemed like it just happened… over the course of just a few minutes. Suddenly we had several people down on the ground, experiencing some type of cardiac arrest or some type of medical episode.

Astroworld organizers canceled the rest of the festival, scheduled to continue on Saturday.

‘Our hearts are with the Astroworld Festival family tonight – especially those we lost and their loved ones,’ they said on the event’s Instagram page. ‘We are focused on supporting local officials’. 

Hours earlier Drake joined Scott on-stage – which was live-streamed by Apple Music – and posted photos to Instagram after the performance.  

Scott’s girlfriend Kylie Jenner and their daughter Stormi Webster watched the rapper perform in front of the huge crowd at his Astroworld festival.

Other short videos and pictures Jenner shared to her Instagram story included a special trailer with Stormi’s name affixed to the door.

The three-year-old joined her mother in the crowd in another video that showed Scott’s high-energy performance, featuring incredible pyrotechnics. They were not near the stage and there is no suggestion that either of them were injured.

The Houston Chronicle quoted Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo as calling it an ‘extremely tragic night’.

A medical examiner will investigate the cause of death at the festival. The deceased had not been identified as of early Saturday.

Officials set up a reunification center at a hotel for family members who had not been able to reach relatives in attendance at the festival. The Houston Fire Department earlier said in a tweet that it was on scene after receiving reports of multiple civilian injuries. 

Astroworld is rapper Scott’s music festival and is being attended by a host of celebrities, including Kylie Jenner and Kendall Jenner. Tickets sold for $180 for general admission and $490 for ‘stargazer’ tickets. 

Footage from NRG park circulating on social media showed scores of people rushing the gates with security at the gates unable to contain the flow.

Several people could be seen falling over, bringing down the metal detectors at the arena entrance but it is unclear if that incident was linked to the deaths.

However, authorities said more than 300 people were injured throughout the day at the event, including those with minor scrapes and bruises. 

An ABC News reporter from Houston’s local affiliate, Mycah Hatfield, had reported via Twitter that chaos ensued during day one of the festival as soon as doors opened at 2p.

‘A stampede burst through the gates. Hundreds of people destroyed the VIP security entrance, bypassing the checkpoint. People were trampled. Some were detained,’ she wrote of the scene at NRG Park. 

One person who was detained by security told ABC13: ‘I just really wanted to be inside the festival so bad.’