Astroworld Attendee Who Climbed Onstage To Beg To Stop Travis Scott’s Show Shares Her Story
"I started screaming over and over again."
Ovidiu Hrubaru / Shutterstock / Twitter The third annual Astroworld Festival, hosted by Travis Scott, faced devastation on Friday after a crowd crush ensued whilst Scott was onstage.
At least 8 people have died and 300 injured, in what is being called a ‘mass casualty.’
Video footage from the festival shows a stampede of fans breaking through fences, as well as festivalgoers dancing on the ambulances that were trying to drive through the crowds to help people who were on the ground.
Seanna Faith, who was in attendance at the Astroworld Festival shared her experience during the terrifying moment that the crowd turned violent.
Seanna Faith tried to stop Travis Scott's performance.
She has been hailed a hero for her efforts but, in her story, she appears devasted that more wasn't done.
“Within the first 30 seconds of the first song, people began to drown – in other people,” she wrote in a now-viral Instagram post. “Breathing became something only a few were capable of. The rest were crushed or unable to breathe in the thick, hot air.”
A video surfaced of Faith climbing up on a ladder and onto a platform where a cameraman was, and started shouting that they needed to stop the concert.
“I screamed over and over again,” she said. “He wouldn’t even look in the direction, so I pushed the camera so it pointed toward where I had just come from.”
The cameraman apparently became angry, and refused to listen to Faith’s cries that people were dying in the crowd.
She was threatened to be pushed off of the 15-foot platform if she didn’t get down, despite her urge for them to just look into the crowd to see the people who were screaming for them to cut the music and stop the show.
The riot caused in the crowd resulted in 25 people being transported to nearby hospitals, with 11 of those people experiencing cardiac arrest.
More than 300 people were treated at the scene at a field hospital set up in NRG Park.
Other Astroworld attendees shared their experiences.
Madeline Eskins, who was also in attendance at the festival, detailed her own experience in an Instagram post, in which she says she’s been to every Astroworld festival but this one was “completely different.”
"I don't think i've ever been more disturbed," Eskins wrote on her Instagram.
"Some of these medical staff had little to no experience with CPR. didn't know how to check a pulse, carotid or femoral. compressions were being done without a pulse check so ppl who had a pulse were getting CPR."
In her post, Eskrins said that she’s an ICU nurse and had to step in to help people who had passed out after she herself had regained consciousness – with no medical professional coming to treat her.
"When I stood up I looked around and people were getting carried out with eyes rolled back into their heads by security, bleeding from their nose and mouth," Eskins wrote on Instagram.
"I yelled 'has ANYBODY checked a pulse?’” It was after shouting that a security guard asked Eskins to check.
For the amount of people at the festival, there weren’t enough medics or medical equipment as well as a lack of cell service, limiting people from calling for help.
Eskins describes that it was teenagers performing CPR on other teenagers, but were doing it incorrectly.
"Teenagers are doing CPR trying to help but they're doing it incorrectly, then I see there's other people doing CPR on people who still have a pulse because nobody has done a pulse check," she wrote.
"It was an absolute sh-t show."
Many other people in the crowd were yelling for additional help as people around them fell unconscious.
Seanna Faith remembers pleading with the 911 operator, repeating over and over that the concert needed a pause, that they needed awareness of the deaths that were happening all around her.
“A kid watched me break down in tears, explaining how I saw people crushed, stomped on, unconscious,” Faith wrote. “He watched the operator say nothing of use to me”
Nia Tipton is a writer living in Brooklyn. She covers pop culture, social justice issues, and trending topics. Follow her on Instagram.