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

ICYMI: We are now learning more about just how the crowd crush unfolded, and it isn’t good. While authorities became fully aware of the problem at 9:30pm, evidence is mounting that it started much earlier.

Madeline Eskins, an ICU nurse who was attending the concert as a guest, told the Washington Post that the atmosphere began to change at 8:50pm, just before Mr Scott took the stage. Squeezed and shoved into an ever-tighter space, she passed out about 25 minutes later.

When she woke up around 9:30pm, she says, she saw many other people "in pretty bad shape", with some lacking a pulse and others receiving CPR or shocks from a defibrillator. “As an ICU nurse, we have organised procedures in place when people go into cardiac arrest. But this was hell," she said.

Alana Stevenson, 20, said that within the first few songs of Mr Scott’s set people were "really basically screaming bloody murder, asking for help", and struggling to get free, sometimes knocking each other out but not realising that there was "nowhere for anyone to go".

She said: “We were literally partying in a graveyard. There was dead bodies and people kept going.”

When rescue carts tried to inch their way through the thick crowd, some people climbed up on them and danced on them. Desmond Gary, 25, told the Post: "It kind of just turned into like, World War Three out there, like people literally fighting for their lives.”

All of this came before 9:30pm.

Since last night, people who were in the crowd have come forward to describe their experiences as mass excitement and a desire to get closer to the stage turned into escalating panic and confinement.

“It was like a ripple effect. One person pushed, and everyone went,” 25-year-old Gerardo Abad Garcia from Denver told The LA Times.

“There was like no airflow in there. It was just like primal instinct: I had to get out.”

“You kept going forward, backward – you couldn’t move,” said Julian Ponce, 21, a psychology student at the University of Texas San Antonio.

Renecca Kallabat, 26, said “it felt like life or death the whole time we were in the crowd”.

In one chilling clip taken from the official Apple Music live stream, someone can be heard screaming “help us!” repeatedly in the background (warning: the audio is disturbing).

Another concertgoer, Jake Scampini, told The Washington Post: “I started freaking out. I thought I was going to pass out. I had to breathe out of my nose because I had an arm around my throat and my mouth.”

The police department posted a statement on Twitter that said the investigation “remains very active and is in its early stages.

“Our prayers remain with the families affected by this tragic event,” the statement said.

A fan called “wholelottajustin” posted video on TikTok of Travis Scott pausing his set to point out a fan that had passed out in front of him.

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.

A memorial to the Astroworld victims has grown in Houston on Sunday. Mourners hugged each other and left floral tributes to the eight people who were killed in the crush at the Travis Scott even on Friday.

Good morning and welcome to The Independent’s blog following updates from the Astroworld music festival where at least people have died following a crowd surge.

Follow the latest updates on the incident.