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Travis Scott fans describe scenes of chaos and tragedy at the Astroworld Festival

TK Tellez, who was present during rapper Travis Scott’s last show in Houston, USA, knows that festivals can get crazy. But nothing, he says, could have prepared him for the tragedy that unfolded on Friday night (5) at the Astroworld Festival.

It all started an hour before Travis Scott performed, when Tellez and his girlfriend stood near the stage in hopes of getting a better look at the rapper.

But before Scott even showed up, things got ugly. The crowd moved forward while the artist was on stage.

“The crowd got tighter and tighter and at that point it was hard to breathe. When Travis appeared singing his first song, I witnessed people passing out beside me,” Tellez, 20, told CNN.

“We were all screaming for help and no one was helping us or listening to us. It was horrible. People screamed for their lives and couldn’t leave. Nobody could move a muscle.”

At least eight people died and dozens were injured after the riot that, according to people at the show, overwhelmed event staff and medical staff at NRG Park. The dead were aged between 14 and 27 years.

Viewers described the event as traumatizing, with many witnesses saying they saw lifeless bodies being trampled amidst the chaos. Those who survived had to struggle to escape the crowd as the music continued.

‘It was the scariest sound I’ve ever heard’

People around Tellez began to fall, he said, at some point causing him to fall too. People crowded on top of him, some losing consciousness.

“Everyone was crying; it was the scariest sound I’ve ever heard,” Tellez said. “Imagine hearing Travis Scott and people screaming for their lives at the same time.”

Despite his attempts and the efforts of other bystanders to administer CPR to the breathless, “there just weren’t enough people to help everyone,” he said.

“Travis Scott would have a short amount of time between songs, and we’d scream our vocal chords so someone could hear us, but no one did,” Tellez said. “This year’s festival will stay with me forever. I had never seen anyone die in front of my eyes. It was horrible.”

‘I felt like it was a nightmare’

Selena Beltran, who was attending her first music festival, noticed that everything around her started to tighten more and more as Scott took the stage. She soon struggled to breathe.

Quickly, she says she lost sight of the four friends, and when the crowd around her started jumping, she lost her balance.

“I fell backwards and it felt like it was the end of me. To think that this is how I’m going to die, I was so scared,” Beltran told CNN. “I did not know what to do. Everything was happening so fast but so slow and I couldn’t react. I just screamed.”

Despite seeing people who had clearly lost consciousness, Beltran said, people continued to trample those on the ground.

“I was shocked to see people act so recklessly and wildly. It was crazy to see so many running over each other like wild animals,” she said. “People didn’t care, they were still trying to squeeze in just to get ahead without thinking about the consequences and who it would affect.”

After someone pulled her upstairs, Beltran said, she tried to help four other people she found passed out, taking turns helping with the rescue with a nurse she met in the crowd.

“I was starting to go into shock, although I was trying to keep my composure and not panic. It was scary. I felt like it was a nightmare,” she said.

“I looked around and saw some people staring and others continuing to have fun as if these people didn’t mean anything. It seemed there was little humanity in that crowd.”

Despite people’s cries to “stop the show,” the music continued, Beltran said. Other witnesses said Scott had paused the show several times, and was eventually interrupted.

At the end of the festival, Beltran saw the bodies of people she had performed CPR — the rescue heart massage — removed by doctors, she said.

“I knew they were gone,” she said. “I couldn’t sleep last night. The moment kept replaying in my mind over and over again.”

‘The children were falling’

Billy Nasser described the riot that killed eight people on Friday night as a “death trap.”

Nasser said he was one of the show’s regulars who tried to help people who were being trampled while “fighting for their lives.”

“I caught a teenager and his eyes rolled to the back of his head, so I checked his pulse. I knew he was dead,” Nasser said. “I checked the people around me. And I just had to leave it there, there was nothing I could do. I had to continue.”

“Young people were falling left and right,” he said.

Nasser, who works as a DJ, said he just wanted the music to stop while people continued to party, “not paying attention to the bodies falling behind them.”

Despite yelling at camera and light techs and asking them to alert Scott to stop the festival, Nasser said there were not enough staff to handle the situation.

“There weren’t enough security guards and there weren’t enough paramedics and people helping the crowd. The paramedics couldn’t even reach the crowd,” he said.

‘I felt like I was going to die’

Madeline Eskins said she didn’t believe she would make it out alive when the deadly crowd surge began.

“He started a countdown about 30 minutes before he introduced himself — he started a timer on the big screen,” Eskins, an ICU nurse, told CNN of Scott’s presentation.

“And all of a sudden, people pressed against each other and started pushing back and forth. As the timer got closer to zero, it just – got worse and worse.”

Eskins described being squeezed in all directions and felt pressure in her chest and back. When she started having trouble breathing, she asked her boyfriend to tell her son that she loved him before she lost consciousness.

“It happens that people run to the stage, it’s not a big deal,” said Eskins. “It’s uncomfortable, some get hurt, but it was overcrowded. I’ve never seen anything like it. I felt like I was going to die.”

After being taken to safety and recovering, Eskins used her medical training to help others in distress, but said there were not enough supplies.

“There were so few resources. I mean, the doctors who were there to help, a lot of them weren’t properly trained,” Eskins said.

“This isn’t to diminish what they were doing – they were still doing their best. They were not given adequate resources,” he said.

At one point, she saw several people in cardiac arrest and the paramedic had only an automated external defibrillator (AED) and an Ambu valve, she said. Both equipment are essential for the rescue procedure.

The main contributing factor to the tragedy, said Eskins, was overcrowding.

“I’ve been to shows and, yes, it gets tough, but I never felt like I was going to pass out,” she said. “I’ve never seen people pass out. I’ve definitely never seen anyone die.”

‘I’ve never seen a show result in something like this’

Joey Guerra, who has covered the Houston music scene for about 10 years, arrived at the festival in the early afternoon and throughout the day saw a normal festival atmosphere.

By the time Scott took the stage that night, Guerra was in the back of the audience and saw small emergency vehicles cutting through the crowd, but “for a festival, it didn’t seem out of the ordinary.”

“You see these things a lot, people being carried around because of exhaustion or dehydration or things like that,” Guerra told CNN by phone Saturday morning. “He stopped the show, I mean, three or four times when he noticed people in danger.”

Guerra said Scott played for about 75 minutes before the set was interrupted.

‘My mind went into total survival mode’

Jeffrey Schmidt and his best friend Casey Wagner were ready for the best weekend of their lives. Instead, they found themselves fighting for their lives.

Schmidt said he remembers feeling like the night was getting worse as the 30-minute timer onstage began to count down, and with each minute breathing became increasingly difficult.

“Casey and I decided to try our best to get out of the crowd slowly. Little did we know, hell was about to explode. People started to faint and fall to the ground,” Schmidt told CNN.

“Casey, I and others present tried to keep the crowd from running them over. But the force of the crowd was very powerful and people started falling on them, including Casey and me.”

The two friends found each other asking for help, but were quickly separated when they were trampled by piles of bodies, with Schmidt’s legs trapped under the others.

“At that moment, my mind went into total survival mode. All I could hear was people screaming and crying for help,” Schmidt said. “I lost all hope and thought I was going to die right there because I couldn’t get my legs off. I fought for my life.

“I thought I would never see my best friend again, life didn’t feel real,” he said.

Eventually, he broke out of the chaos and ran to the cops for help, but they initially didn’t take him seriously, he said. Schmidt and Wagner later reunited and both were “terrified and traumatized,” he added.

“This wasn’t a show, it was a fight for survival,” said Schmidt.

“I witnessed several people unconscious and unable to breathe as people below me cried for my help. But I physically couldn’t help it. That’s what traumatized me the most, that I couldn’t help the people around me. them and their families.”

(Translated text. Read the original in English here).

Reference: CNN Brasil

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