Astroworld Festival – latest: Police launch criminal probe as Travis Scott promises to help victims’ families

The Independent’s Sheila Flynn reports that mass casualty events from crowd surges are not uncommon.

Previous tragedies include the 1989 Hillsborough disaster – which left 97 people dead after a football match in Sheffield, England – to the 2003 Rhode Island nightclub fire in West Warwick, Rhode Island, that killed 100 people and injured 230.

“At occupancies of about 7 persons per square meter the crowd becomes almost a fluid mass,” John Fruin, a retired research engineer with the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, explained in a 1993 paper, The Causes and Prevention of Crowd Disasters.

“Shock waves can be propagated through the mass sufficient to lift people off of their feet and propel them distances of 3 m (10 ft) or more. People may be literally lifted out of their shoes, and have clothing torn off. Intense crowd pressures, exacerbated by anxiety, make it difficult to breathe.”

The New Yorker published an extensive exploration of crowds and how to keep them safe in 2011.

“Some people die standing up; others die in the pileup that follows a ‘crowd collapse,’ when someone goes down, and more people fall over him,” the article – titled Crush Point – found.

The piece continued: “In popular accounts, they are almost invariably described as ‘panics.’ The crowd is portrayed as a single, unified entity, which acts according to ‘mob psychology’—a set of primitive instincts (fear, followed by flight) that favor self-preservation over the welfare of others, and cause ‘stampedes’ and ‘tramplings.’”

People are usually “moving toward something they want, rather than away from something they fear” The New Yorker article explains, and, if you’re caught in the crush, “you’re just as likely to die on your feet as under the feet of others”.

Viral videos from the Astroworld music festival in Houston have emerged, showing the scale of the stampede that left eight people dead and hundreds injured on Friday.

Videos that have gone viral on social media sites such as Reddit and Twitter show medical services personnel struggling to go through the crowd of dancing concertgoers at Houston’s NRG stadium as they attempted to rescue those who had been injured.

Around 50,000 people were in attendance when part of the crowd began to rush towards the stage during rapper Travis Scott’s performance. At least two investigations, one of them criminal, have been launched into the deadly concert.

The Independent’s Sravasti Dasgupta has more...

The chief of the Houston Police personally warned Travis Scott about crowd control just hours before eight fans died during the tragedy at Astroworld Festival, according to media reports.

A source with knowledge of Houston Police Chief Troy Finner’s account of the day told the New York Times that he had visited the rapped at his trailer before he took to the stage on Friday in front of 50,000 fans in Houston, Texas.

Chief Finner, who knows Mr Scott personally, is said to have relayed his concerns about the energy of the crowd which he said would include very devoted fans.

The Independent’s Rachel Sharp has the full story...

Travis Scott and the organisers of the Astroworld event that left eight people dead have been sued by an injured concertgoer who branded it a “predictable and preventable tragedy.”

Lawyers for Manuel Souza filed a petition in Harris County District Court suing Scott, event organiser ScoreMore and concert giant Live Nation over the Friday night incident.

The lawsuit claims the tragedy was the result of “a motivation for profit at the expense of concertgoers’ health and safety” and the “encouragement of violence,” according to Billboard.

“Defendants failed to properly plan and conduct the concert in a safe manner,” wrote Mr Souza’s attorney, Steve Kherkher, of the firm Kherkher Garcia LLP.

Graeme Massie has the details...

At least 50,000 people gathered for the third annual Astroworld Festival at the site of the former Houston Six Flags park on Friday.

Signs of potential crowd-control issues came earlier in the day, when people were reportedly hopping turnstyles and fences to enter the sold-out festival without tickets – which led to a crowd size organisers were unprepared for and overwhelming medical units.

Authorities were notified at about 9.30pm about the escalating situation and the event was shut down by 10.10pm.

Eight people died, the youngest just 14, and an estimated 300 people were injured in the tragedy.

A survivor of the Astroworld Festival tragedy has told how when he pleaded for help he was told the show couldn’t be stopped because it was being streamed live.

Cody Hartt said the response from festival staff as hundreds of people were being crushed was “disgusting”.

Eight people were killed and hundreds were injured during a crowd surge on Friday night as headliner Travis Scott was performing.

The youngest victim of the deadly crowd surge at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston was a talented baseball player who “lived life to the fullest”, his former coach said.

John Hilgert, 14, a freshman at Memorial High School in Houston, was among the eight people who died in the tragedy.

In a post on Facebook, John’s former baseball coach Justin Higgs paid tribute to him as a talented player who left an impression on everyone he met.

“His chapter isn’t over he’s playing ball in the sky right now watching over all of us. He was that good at not just baseball but being himself,” Mr Higgs wrote, adding he “lived his life to the fullest”.

“Beyond sad for his family and friends.”

Sheila Flynn has the full story...

A security guard was allegedly stabbed in the neck with a needle as he tried to restrain a crowd member during a deadly stampede at the Astroworld Festival in Houston on Friday.

The security guard fell unconscious while being treated by medical staff and was given Narcan, a nasal spray used to treat opioid overdoses, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner told a weekend press conference.

“He was revived, and the medical staff did notice pricks that were similar to when somebody’s trying to inject,” Mr Finner said.

Mr Finner added Narcan was administered in “several instances” at the Astroworld Festival.

Eight people died and 300 were treated for injuries after a deadly crowd surge during Travis Scott’s performance on Friday.

The father of an Astroworld Festival attendee who was crushed in the fatal crowd surge has vowed to hold Travis Scott and the concert promoters responsible.

Eric Tamblyn posted on Twitter that his son narrowly survived Friday’s deadly stampede that claimed eight lives and left dozens more injured.

“My son was at the bottom of one of the human piles. He was crushed,” wrote Mr Tambyln.

“While he survived, many around him did not. They were all screaming for help and to stop the show. You did not and you, the crew, venue and promoters will be held responsible.”

One of the victims of the “crowd surge” that led to multiple casualties at rapper Travis Scott‘s Astroworld Festival in Houston died trying to save his fiancée, his brother said.

At least eight people died and hundreds of others were injured after a huge crowd surge on the opening night of the two-day festival. Around 50,000 people were in attendance when part of the crowd began to rush towards the stage during Scott’s performance.

Danish Baig (27) died in an ambulance after being crushed while trying to save his 25-year-old fiancée Olivia Swingle. They were separated during the chaos at the event, and by the time the ambulance managed to get to Baig, he couldn’t be revived.

Alisha Rahaman Sarkar reports: