Mourners memorialize 8 who died at Astroworld Festival as Houston authorities investigate

HOUSTON - As the stories of the eight people killed in the crushing crowds of the Astroworld Festival in Houston began to emerge Sunday, mourners lined the fences outside the NRG Park where Travis Scott performed with flower bouquets and notes of solidarity with the rapper’s fans.

“Long live all the Ragers,” one person wrote, a nod to the affectionate nickname for Scott fanatics.

“Rage in peace,” wrote another on paper fastened to the fence.

The victims ranged in age from 14 to 27, according to Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner, D. A high school freshman. A soon-to-be college graduate in mechanical engineering. A sports enthusiast who was celebrating his upcoming 21st birthday.

A criminal investigation is underway in Houston, led by homicide detectives, as law enforcement officials seek to understand what happened to the eight who died and the scores more who were injured at the high-energy, sold-out event as the audience surged toward the stage.

The “all-encompassing” investigation is being led by the homicide division, and “everybody that needs to be involved will be involved,” Jodi Silva, a spokeswoman for the Houston Police Department, said Sunday.

A video reconstruction of the night shows a chaotic scene in which concertgoers tried to yell for help but were drowned out by loud music. It’s not clear how many of the cries Scott heard, given that he was onstage and wearing in-ear monitors. Scott paused his performance at least four times but ultimately kept going until the concert stopped roughly an hour after videos from the crowd showed concertgoers in distress.

An event operations plan written by event organizers in consultation with the Houston police and fire departments and the venue staff at NRG Park said that the executive producer and the festival director had authority to stop the show, but did not specify who held those roles. Seven people were identified as being in the event’s “management structure,” but a job title was stated for only one: safety and risk director. A separate section of the document that was supposed to specify individuals who could shut down the power and end the show to enable an evacuation was left blank.

The document described procedures on how to respond to a variety of threats - lost persons, missing children, traumatic injuries, deaths, active shooters and unruly fans, but did not specifically address crown surges or mosh pit safety concerns.

It’s not clear if the 56-page document was the final version of the event operation plan.

The investigation probably will go on for “quite some time to determine what exactly happened,” Turner said Saturday, noting that it could be days or weeks or “even longer.”

On Sunday, between the two memorials along the fences, security guards let in concert attendees who had left belongings in lockers or who wanted to search the lost and found.

Piles of flowers accumulated and a slow stream of teary-eyed people in festival merchandise stopped by to pay their respects. A nonprofit from San Antonio provided therapy dogs to help ease the pain.

“I feel just so saddened and lost right now,” said 18-year-old Marc Medina, who had watched Scott rap from center stage Friday. He stared at the shirts that hung from the fence.

He’s had a hard time sleeping since that night, he said. Every time he closed his eyes, he thought about a man he saw on the ground whose face had turned purple.

“If you see bodies like that, it’s hard to forget,” he said.

At least 25 people were taken to a hospital Friday night, and 13 were still hospitalized Saturday afternoon, including five juveniles. A 10-year-old child was in critical condition, officials said.

An estimated 50,000 people attended the Friday show, part of an event organized by Scott, whose concerts have a reputation for rowdiness and have sometimes led to injuries among members of the audience. Scott has collected misdemeanor convictions in two states after authorities said he encouraged unruly behavior by audiences.

In February 2018, Scott agreed to plead guilty to disorderly conduct at a show in an outdoor amphitheater-style venue in Rogers, Ark., the previous year. Rogers police said in a statement that Scott “encouraged people to rush the stage and bypass the security protocols to ensure concert goer safety,” and that several people were injured in the rush.

Additional charges of inciting a riot and endangering the welfare of a minor were dismissed as part of Scott’s plea deal. The law firm that represented Scott said he was also required to pay was required to pay $6,825 to two people who said that they were injured at the concert.

In December 2015, Scott also pleaded guilty to reckless conduct in Chicago after he was accused of sparking a stampede at a summer festival by urging fans to climb over barriers, court records show. A judge ordered that Scott be supervised by the court for a year.

Scott is also being sued in New York together with concert organizers by an audience member who was left paralyzed after he fell from a balcony at an April 2017 show in Manhattan. Video from the event showed Scott appearing to encourage another member of the audience to drop from a balcony to the crowd below. Scott has denied wrongdoing.

Freelance photographer Amy Harris, a veteran of music festivals who has worked among countless throngs in close quarters, attended the concert Friday, but said, “I have never seen a crowd act like this.”

“I’ve never seen people be this aggressive and just decide they want to go somewhere and en masse bum rush places,” said Harris, who was there on assignment for the Associated Press.

Harris became trapped in a crush of people as she tried to exit the area reserved for photographers near the stage where rapper Don Toliver had been performing late Saturday afternoon. With the crowd pressing in on both sides, her fear overpowered her impulse to document the chaos.

“Typically, I would take pictures, but it wasn’t like that. It was like, I need to get out of here,” she said.

When she made it out, just before 5 p.m., Harris texted the Astroworld public relations team, telling them the conditions near the stage were unsafe. A representative responded within minutes and found Harris a clear pathway in and out of the photo pit. Later, after photographing Scott’s first three songs, she felt the crowd getting out of control again and decided to leave early, even though she knew a “special guest” - Drake - was due to appear.

“I just had this feeling like, ‘We need to go,’” Harris said Sunday night. So severe were her safety concerns that she told her editor then she wouldn’t return for the second day of the show, something she had never done before in her career of 12 years.

On Saturday, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo, D, a county executive who presides over emergency management, called for an “objective, independent investigation as to what went on and how it could have been prevented.”

Kurt Arnold, a Houston trial lawyer who specializes in catastrophic personal injury cases, said he anticipates lawsuits arising from the Astroworld Festival tragedy to be wide-ranging in their targets.

“What’s unique in this situation is that there was prior notice. This wasn’t a split-second situation like a sudden stage collapse,” he said about the chaotic tone of the day. “When you look at the trampling at the barricade . . . it’s just crazy.”

One such lawsuit was filed over the weekend. A festival attendee sued Scott, the organizers and others tied to the event, saying their “motivation for profit at the expense of concertgoers’ health and safety” led to deaths and injuries.

The attendee, Manuel Souza, was trampled and seriously injured, according to a lawsuit. An attorney for Souza said the lawsuit, which seeks more than $1 million in damages, was filed to Harris County District Court on Saturday.

In videos posted to his Instagram story on Saturday, Scott said he is working with Houston officials to understand what happened and help the families of the victims. “My fans really mean the world to me,” he said. “I am honestly just devastated.”

“Any time I could make out anything that was going on, I stopped the show and helped them get the help they need,” he added. “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation,” he said in an apparent reference to the scale of the injuries in the crowd.

Turner, the mayor, said about 530 Houston police officers and 755 private security officers hired by Live Nation were at the event. Asked why authorities had not ended the show sooner, Finner, the police chief, on Saturday said it would have been unsafe. “You cannot just close when you have 50,000 individuals. You have to worry about riots when you have a group that young.”

The Astroworld Festival is produced by entertainment behemoth Live Nation and the Texas-based ScoreMore Promotions, of which Live Nation acquired a majority stake in 2018. ScoreMore, which bills itself as “your favorite rappers favorite promoter,” built a reputation for spotting emerging indie artists in electronic dance music and hip-hop to bring them to Southern audiences before they hit superstardom.

Sascha Stone Guttfreund, who runs the company that produced the Astroworld Festival with Live Nation, told The Post on Saturday night that he was working with authorities. Guttfreund did not respond to requests for comment on Sunday.

“Live Nation and Astroworld put together plans for this event - a security plan, a site plan - that they were at the table with City of Houston [agencies] and Harris County’s NRG Park,” Hidalgo, the county judge, said Saturday. “And so perhaps the plans were inadequate, perhaps the plans were good but they weren’t followed, perhaps it was something else entirely.”

“It may well be that this tragedy is a result of unpredictable events, of circumstances coming together that couldn’t possibly have been avoided,” she added. “But until we determine that, I will ask the tough questions.”

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The Washington Post’s Arelis R. Hernández, Mariana Alfaro, Annabelle Timsit, Marisa Iati, Adela Suliman, Sarah Cahlan, Elyse Samuels, Jennifer Hassan, Rachel Pannett, Reis Thebault and Jon Swaine contributed to this report.