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Travis Scott performs at Day 1 of the Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park, Nov. 5, 2021, in Houston. A nearly 1,300-page police report released on Friday, July 28, 2023, shows some of the safety concerns people had before rap superstar Travis Scott took the stage at the deadly 2021 Astroworld festival in Houston.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Amy Harris\/Invision\/AP<\/p>\n
Join us on a journey to better understand Houston, one question at a time. Sign up to get the Houston Explained newsletter in your inbox every Tuesday and Friday.<\/a><\/p>\n The only time in my life I truly believed I was going to die was on a Friday night almost five years ago.<\/p>\n It was Nov. 5, 2021, the first night of the Astroworld Festival,<\/a> Houston-born rapper Travis Scott’s celebration of music and the city that raised him, at NRG Park. Ten people did die<\/a>, aged 9 to 27: John Hilgert, Brianna Rodriguez, Jacob Jurinek, Franco Pati\u00f1o, Danish Baig, Axel Acosta, Rudy Pe\u00f1a, Madison Dubiski, Bharti Shahani and Ezra Blount.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n They were crushed in a crowd I was standing in and wrestled my way out of.\u00a0<\/p>\n I was supposed to write about the festival’s triumphant return to Houston after the pandemic, with a lineup<\/a> stacked with SZA, Young Thug, Bad Bunny,\u00a0and, of course, Travis Scott<\/a> himself. I had an assignment, one that I begged for, for the University of Houston\u2019s life and arts magazine.\u00a0<\/p>\n But I never wrote that story, and this is the first time I have tried.<\/p>\n Before the sun went down<\/p>\n So much hype had built<\/a> around the festival, back for the first time since before the pandemic, that I felt a thrill at just seeing the entrance, marked by a giant inflatable of Scott’s head with its mouth agape.<\/a>\u00a0I was there with a team of UH student journalists and photographers, all my friends.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n For most of the afternoon, the festival was what Scott intended: a celebration of his Houston. Carnival games and rides paid homage to the real Astroworld,<\/a> the amusement park that closed in 2005, and I ate Frenchy\u2019s<\/a> for the first time in my life standing on that lot.<\/p>\n But the trouble was brewing right under our noses. Unaware of the danger,<\/a> we watched people hop the fences, skirt sheriff\u2019s deputies on horseback and overrun the merchandise stands.\u00a0<\/p>\n Houston knows how to get rowdy, I remember thinking.<\/p>\n On the walk to the main stage after\u00a0SZA’s set, I understood how packed the place was.\u00a0<\/p>\n All the day’s acts so far had performed on the Thrills stage on the west end of the grounds, and Scott’s set would be on the massive Chills stage on the east. So the crowd moved from one side of the festival to the other all at once. And by the time we stopped moving, we were penned in on every side either by barricades or by masses of people.<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The fateful set<\/p>\n
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