HOUSTON – At the Astroworld Festival last Friday night, a devastating mixture of injury, panic and ultimately death, transpired as concert-goers surged forward toward the stage where Travis Scott was performing.
“I heard people screaming for help, friends screaming, people crying and people crying for their parents”, Ayden Cruz said.
Eighteen-year-old Cruz, a Heights High School varsity basketball player, was at the concert with a group of seven friends who were all trampled on by the crowd.
He said it felt like a river of people picking him off the ground and then crushing him on top of other helpless people.
“People started falling down on top of us. Like, my body’s lying on its back and from my toes to my face, I am covered by people. I’m not getting any oxygen down there,” Cruz said. “I came to the point where I thought I was going to die and I started praying to God to save me”.
At that very moment, Cruz said the music suddenly stopped for a second, and an opening in the mass of people above him appeared.
He said he was able to reach his hand up through an opening in the crush of people and someone suddenly reached out and pulled him to safety.
At that point, his only thought was to do whatever he could to save the others who were in trouble below him.
He said he scaled a camera platform and began screaming for help. He said the camera operator started yelling at him to get down, to get off the platform. But Cruz said he just kept screaming to stop the show immediately and to help the injured people.
“I was yelling, ‘I just got out of there. You don’t know what’s happening down there. There are kids in there.’ I literally saw kids down there. I saw people down there dying, and I wanted to do something,” Cruz said.
Now, Houston Police Homicide Division detectives and the narcotics division detectives are investigating the tragedy. Homicide detectives said Tuesday, they wanted to interview Cruz.
Detectives said they want to talk to him because he knows who he pleaded with for help and who he tried to get to stop the show.
Investigators are now trying to figure out why no one listened, and why the show was able to continue on with so many people being injured and dying.
