Earlier tonight, it was confirmed that at least eight people have died with hundreds more injured after a crowd surge incident at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas.
The “mass casualty event” happened during Travis Scott’s opening night set, with Houston fire chief Samuel Peña explaining that “the crowd began to compress towards the front of the stage, and that caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries.”
Footage had been posted earlier in the day when the gates to the festival were opening, with concertgoers breaking down security fences in an effort to get into the event.
They smoked VIP #Astroworld pic.twitter.com/AYvjKT8VBY
— Big Bren (@LeBrennonMoore) November 5, 2021
Elsewhere, people were climbing over fences to get in.
Astroworld security not playing this year 😭😭 pic.twitter.com/JTNiPNyXHJ
— andrésito costa (@andrrusco) November 5, 2021
Local news reporter Mycah Hatfield posted footage of people just running straight past the security bag check areas and waiting police in order to enter the festival.
Hatfield described it as a “stampede” and said some were “trampled”, adding that some of the concertgoers were detained at this point.
As we were arriving to the Astroworld Festival at NRG Park right at 2:00, a stampede burst through the gates. Hundreds of people destroyed the VIP security entrance, bypassing the checkpoint. People were trampled. Some were detained.
(Excuse any language you may hear) pic.twitter.com/d0m2rjqAAk
— Mycah Hatfield (@MycahABC13) November 5, 2021
Later, it seems the security fences were picked up and thrown around by attendees who were lining up to purchase merchandise at the fest.
https://twitter.com/SunKissedMocha_/status/1456659538799562759
The festival was expecting 50,000 ticketed attendees over the two days it ran for, but it’s not known how many were actually in attendance given that some people were seen entering without tickets.
The second day of the festival has been cancelled.
