Officials: 8 Dead After Crowd Surge at Astroworld Fest in Houston

At least eight people died and numerous others were injured in what officials described as a surge of the crowd at the Astroworld music festival in Houston while rapper Travis Scott was performing.

Officials declared a “mass casualty incident” just after 9 p.m. Friday during the festival where an estimated 50,000 people were in attendance, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told reporters at a news conference.

Peña and Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo both reported there were eight people killed and that more than 300 people had been treated at a field hospital for injuries.

At least 17 people were hospitalized, 11 of whom were in cardiac arrest, Peña said. The conditions of those hospitalized are not yet known.

Peña told reporters that at about 9:38 p.m., there was a surge toward the stage while Travis Scott was performing and that “scores of people were injured.”

“That caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries, people began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic,” the fire chief said.

Our hearts are broken. People go to these events looking for a good time, a chance to unwind, to make memories. It’s not the kind of event you go to where you expect to find out about fatalities.

Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo

Peña said the causes of death will be determined by the medical examiner. Meanwhile, police are working to identify the victims.

Officials set up a reunification center at the Wyndham Houston at 8686 Kirby for anyone looking for missing AstroWorld attendees. Authorities were looking to connect families with festivalgoers who were transported to the hospital, “some as young as 10” years old, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo said.

Houston police Executive Assistant Chief Lt. Larry Satterwhite, who was near the front, said the situation developed quickly.

“It seems like it happened with just over the course of a few minutes —suddenly we had several people down on the ground experiencing some type of cardiac arrest or some type of medical episode,” he said.

About 50,000 people were at the event at NRG Park, which was being put on by rapper and producer Travis Scott. The festival, which is in its third year, was expected to be a two-day event, but officials said that Saturday’s lineup had been canceled.

The surge happened shortly after 9 p.m. Friday. The show was called off shortly after several people began suffering injuries.

“It was scary, like genuinely,” one concertgoer, Alleighya Odom, 21, told NBC News, adding that the tightly packed crowd “was like this force on my back, this continuous force.”

“I started looking around and there’s people on the ground, there’s people looking at me like scared, eyes wild, like, ‘please help me.'” she said. “There’s people behind me crying because they’re being stepped on.”

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner urged people not to speculate about what happened but said the incident was under investigation.

“I think it’s very important that none of us speculate. Nobody has all the answers tonight,” Finner said. He added that there have been several rumors surrounding the event that authorities would look into.

“We’re going to do an investigation and find out because it’s not fair to the producers, to anybody else involved, until we determine what happened, what caused the surge,” he said. “We don’t know, but we will find out.”

The Associated Press reached out to a representative for Scott but did not immediately hear back.

Finner told reporters that Scott and the event promoters cooperated with police.

Scott founded Astroworld Festival in 2018 and it has taken place at the former site of Six Flags AstroWorld each year since, except for in 2020 because of the coronavirus pandemic.

Other music events where there have been multiple fatalities in recent years include the Las Vegas massacre in 2017 when 58 people were killed at the Route 91 Harvest Festival, the so-called Ghost Ship fire in 2016 that killed 36 people in California and the 2003 Station nightclub fire that killed 100 people in Rhode Island.