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Just moments before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly Astroworld festival in 2021, a contract worker was so worried about what might happen after seeing people getting crushed that he texted an event organizer saying: “Somebody’s going to end up dead,” according to a police report released Friday.
The texts by contract security officer Reece Wheeler were some of the many examples in the nearly 1,300-page report, in which festival officials highlighted problems and warned of possible deadly consequences. The report includes transcripts of 911 calls made by concertgoers and summaries of police interviews, including one with Scott conducted just days after the event.
A crowd surge at an outdoor festival in Houston on November 5, 2021, killed 10 attendees, ages 9 to 27. The official cause of death was compression asphyxia, which an expert likened to being smeared by a car. About 50,000 people attended the festival.
“Pull tons across the rail unconscious. There is panic in people’s eyes. This could go bad quickly,” Reece Wheeler texted Shauna Boardman, one of the private security directors, at 9 p.m. Wheeler then texted, “I know they’re going to try to fight this, but I would wanted to go on the record that I am not advising this to continue. Someone will end up dead.
Scott’s concert started at 9:02 p.m. In their review of video from the live stream of the concert, police investigators said at 9:13 p.m. they heard the faint sound of someone saying, “Stop the show.” The same request could be heard at 21:16 and 21:22
In an Aug. 19, 2022, police interview, Boardman’s attorneys told investigators that Boardman “saw that things weren’t as bad as Reece Wheeler said” and decided not to share Wheeler’s concerns with anyone else.
A grand jury declined to indict anyone who was investigated for the event, including Scott, Boardman and four other people.
During a police interview conducted two days after the concert, Scott told investigators that although he saw one person near the stage receiving medical attention, the audience generally seemed to be enjoying the show and he saw no signs of any serious problems.
“We asked if at any point he heard the crowd telling him to stop the show. He stated that if he had heard something like that, he would have done something,” police said in a summary of Scott’s interview.
Hip-hop artist Drake, who performed with Scott at the concert, told police it was difficult to see from the stage what was happening in the crowd and that he did not hear patrons’ pleas to stop the show.
Drake learned of the tragedy later that night from his manager while learning more on social media, police said in their summary.
Marty Wahlgren, who worked for a security consulting firm hired by the festival, told police that when he went backstage and tried to tell Scott and Drake’s representatives that the concert had to end because people were injured and could were dead, he was told “Drake still has three more songs,” according to a summary of the interview.
Daniel Johari, a college student who fell into the trap of concertgoers and later used his skills as an emergency doctor in Israel to help an injured woman, told investigators that hundreds of people chanted for Scott to stop the music and that the chants could be heard “from everywhere”.
“He said staff members in the area gave a thumbs up and didn’t care,” according to the police report.
Richard Riqueada, a retired Houston police officer who worked for a private security company at the festival, told investigators that starting at 8 a.m. the day of the concert, things were “pretty chaotic,” according to a police summary of his interview. His concerns and questions about whether the concert should go ahead were “met with a lot of shrugs,” he said.
About 23 minutes into the concert, broadcaster Gregory Hoffman radioed into the show’s trailer to warn that “people are dying.” Hoffman was operating a large crane that held a television camera before it was overwhelmed with concertgoers who needed medical attention, police said.
The production team radioed Hoffman to ask when they could get the crane back in service.
Salvatore Livia, who was hired to direct the live show, told police that after Hoffman’s stern warning, people in the production trailer knew something was wrong, but “they were disconnected from the reality of (what) was going on there ,” according to a police summary of Livia’s interview.
Concertgoer Christopher Gates, then 22, told police that on the second or third song of Scott’s performance, he came across five people on the ground who he believed were already dead.
Their bodies were “lifeless, pale and their lips were blue/purple,” according to the police report. Bystanders in the crowd — not medics — provided CPR.
The police report was released about a month after a Houston grand jury declined to indict Scott in connection with the deadly concert. Police Chief Troy Finner said the report is being made public so people can “read the entire investigation” and come to their own conclusions about the case. During a news conference after the grand jury’s decision, Finner declined to say what the overall conclusion of his agency’s investigation was or whether police should have stopped the concert earlier.
The release of the report came on the same day Scott released his new album, Utopia.
More than 500 lawsuits have been filed over the deaths and injuries at the concert, including many against concert promoter Live Nation and Scott. Some have since been settled.