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9-year-old Dallas boy dies after Astroworld festival crush
A 9-year-old Dallas boy has become the youngest person to die from injuries sustained during a crowd surge at the Astroworld music festival in Houston.
Ezra Blount of Dallas died Sunday at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston, family attorney Ben Crump said.
Ezra was placed in a medically induced coma after suffering serious injuries in the Nov. 5 crush of fans during a performance by the festival’s headliner, rapper Travis Scott.
Also read:8 dead, several injured at Astroworld Festival in Houston
He is the 10th person who attended the festival to die.
“The Blount family tonight is grieving the incomprehensible loss of their precious young son,” Crump said in a news release Sunday night. “This should not have been the outcome of taking their son to a concert, what should have been a joyful celebration.”
Treston Blount, Ezra’s father, described what happened Nov. 5 in a post on a GoFundMe page that he set up to help defray Ezra’s medical expenses. He said Ezra was sitting on his shoulders when a crowd surge crushed them. The father lost consciousness and when he came to, Ezra was missing, Blount said. A frantic search ensued until Ezra was eventually found at the hospital, severely injured.
The child incurred severe damage to his brain, kidney, and liver after being “kicked, stepped on, and trampled, and nearly crushed to death,” according to a lawsuit his family has filed against Scott and the event’s organizer, Live Nation. The Blount family is seeking at least $1 million in damages.
The others who died ranged in age from 14 to 27. Some 300 people were treated at the festival site and 13 were hospitalized.
Also read: 9 Hindu devotees die in India road crash
Houston police and fire department investigators have said they are reviewing surveillance video provided by concert promoter Live Nation, as well as dozens of clips people at the show widely shared on social media. Investigators also planned to speak with Live Nation representatives, Scott and concertgoers. Scott and the event organizers are now the focus of a criminal investigation.
Mar-a-Lago-trespasser deported to China 2 years later
A Chinese businesswoman convicted of trespassing at President Donald Trump’s Mar-a-Lago club and lying to Secret Service agents was deported over the weekend, federal authorities said, more than two years after serving her sentence.
Yujing Zhang was turned over to immigration officials in December 2019 after serving her eight-month sentence. But she was held at the Glades County Detention Center for three times as long as her prison term mainly because of deportation delays during the COVID-19 pandemic, immigration authorities told the Miami Herald.
READ: Trump asks US judge to force Twitter to restore his account
At the time of her sentencing, the then 33-year-old Zhang went to Mar-a-Lago “to meet the president and family and just make friends.” When an incredulous judge questioned her about whether she thought she could really meet the Trumps, Zhang laughed loudly and said she hoped to meet other people, too.
Zhang then told U.S. District Judge Roy Altman that the president told reporters that he had invited Zhang to Mar-a-Lago. But Altman said that was another lie.
It's unclear what Zhang's motives were, but the judge said it was clearly about more than getting a photo opportunity.
After serving her sentence and while still detained by U.S. immigration officials, Zhang grew desperate to expedite her return to China. The newspaper reported she filed a petition in December 2020 to speed up the process, but was not successful.
READ: Biden backs Trump rejection of China’s South China Sea claim
Zhang wrote in English that she had been held at the Glades County Detention Center, had no money to call her family in China, and needed an attorney to gain her freedom and go home, according to court documents.
National Public Radio books editor Petra Mayer dies at 46
Petra Mayer, books editor for National Public Radio, died Saturday of what’s believed to be a pulmonary embolism, the news organization said. She was 46.
Mayer is remembered for her reporting at Comic-Con and helping put together NPR’s Book Concierge, an annual interactive guide that filters titles based on interest to recommend to readers. She was an occasional guest on “Pop Culture Happy Hour” podcast episodes, and her colleagues said she was a proud nerd who loved science fiction and comics.
READ: Toab Khan joins as Editor of new ‘Dainik Bangla’
NPR’s senior vice president for news, Nancy Barnes, said in an email to staff that she died suddenly at Holy Cross Hospital in Maryland.
“Petra was NPR through and through,” Barnes wrote.
Mayer joined NPR Books team in 2012 after working as an associate producer and director for “All Things Considered” on the weekends, handling the show’s books coverage.
READ: 2nd janaza of Janakantha editor Atikullah on Thursday
Her biography on NPR's website said she first joined as an engineering assistant in 1994 while attending Amherst College, but left a few years later for a news writing job at Boston's WBUR and for a master's degree in journalism from Columbia University. She returned to NPR in 2000.
UN chief says global warming goal on 'life support'
United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres says the goal of limiting global warming to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) is “on life support” with climate talks in Glasgow so far not reaching any of the U.N.’s three goals, but he added that “until the last moment, hope should be maintained.”
In an exclusive interview Thursday with The Associated Press, Guterres said the U.N. climate talks in Glasgow, Scotland “are in a crucial moment” and need to accomplish more than securing a weak deal that participating nations agree to support.
Read: Climate talks draft agreement expresses ‘alarm and concern’
“The worst thing would be to reach an agreement at all costs by a minimum common denominator that would not respond to the huge challenges we face,” Guterres said.
That’s because the overarching goal of limiting warming since pre-industrial times to 1.5 degrees Celsius (2.7 F) by the end of the century “is still on reach but on life support,” Guterres said. The world has already warmed 1.1 degrees Celsius (2 degrees Fahrenheit), leaving less than a degree before the threshold is hit.
Read: US envoy calls for joint action to tackle climate crisis right now
“It is the moment to reach agreement by increasing ambition in all areas: mitigation, adaptation and finance in a balanced way,” Guterres said in the 25-minute AP interview.
A U.S.-China agreement announced Wednesday provided some hope of the negotiations yielding significant progress.
Pfizer asks FDA to OK COVID-19 booster shots for all adults
Pfizer asked U.S. regulators Tuesday to allow boosters of its COVID-19 vaccine for anyone 18 or older, a step that comes amid concern about increased spread of the coronavirus with holiday travel and gatherings.
Older Americans and other groups particularly vulnerable to the virus have had access to a third dose of the Pfizer and BioNTech vaccine since September. But the Food and Drug Administration has said it would move quickly to expand boosters to younger ages if warranted.
Pfizer is submitting early results of a booster study in 10,000 people to make its case that it’s time to further expand the booster campaign.
Also Read: Pfizer says COVID-19 pill cut hospital, death risk by 90%
While all three vaccines used in the U.S. continue to offer strong protection against severe COVID-19 illness and death, the shots’ effectiveness against milder infection can wane over time.
Pfizer’s new study concluded a booster could restore protection against symptomatic infection to about 95%, even as the extra-contagious delta variant was surging. Side effects were similar to those seen with the company’s first two shots.
A median of 11 months after their last Pfizer vaccination, trial participants were given either a third dose or a dummy shot. Researchers tracked any infections that occurred at least a week later, and so far have counted five cases of symptomatic COVID-19 among booster recipients compared to 109 cases among people who got dummy shots.
The Biden administration had originally envisioned boosters for all adults, but faced a stinging setback in September when the FDA’s scientific advisers rejected extra Pfizer doses for everyone. The panel wasn’t convinced that young healthy people needed another dose, particularly when most of the world’s population remains unvaccinated, and instead recommended boosters just for certain groups — one of a series of decisions about extra doses for all of the three vaccines used in the U.S.
Also Read: FDA paves way for Pfizer COVID-19 vaccinations in young kids
The current rules: People who initially received Pfizer or Moderna vaccinations are eligible for a booster six months later if they’re 65 or older, or are at high risk of COVID-19 because of health problems or their job or living conditions. Because the single-dose Johnson & Johnson vaccine hasn’t proven as effective as its two-dose competitors, any J&J recipient can get a booster at least two months later.
Also, anyone eligible for a booster doesn’t have to stick with their initial vaccination type and can get a different company’s vaccine, what’s called mixing and matching.
About 194 million Americans are fully vaccinated. Under today’s policies, authorities already estimated about 2 of every 3 vaccinated adults could qualify for a booster within the next few months. Many who don’t meet the criteria often score an extra shot because many vaccine providers don’t check qualifications.
FDA spokeswoman Alison Hunt said the agency would review Pfizer’s application “as expeditiously as possible,” but would not set a timeline for a decision. She also said the FDA hasn’t yet decided whether to convene its panel of outside experts to vet the data.
If the FDA authorizes Pfizer’s request for expanded boosters, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention then will make recommendations for how to use them.
Globally, boosters also are a hodge-podge. Some countries restrict them to older or medically fragile people while others have few restrictions. Israel, for example, has allowed Pfizer boosters for anyone 12 and older. Canada’s health regulator on Tuesday authorized Pfizer boosters for people 18 and older.
Also Read: World could return to normal within a year: Pfizer CEO
US reopens to international travel, allows happy reunions
Parents held children born while they were stuck abroad. Long-separated couples kissed, and grandparents embraced grandchildren who had doubled in age.
The U.S. fully reopened to many vaccinated international travelers Monday, allowing families and friends to reunite for the first time since the coronavirus emerged and offering a boost to the travel industry decimated by the pandemic. The restrictions closed the U.S. to millions of people for 20 months.
Octavio Alvarez and his 14-year-old daughter zipped through a pedestrian crossing in San Diego in less than 15 minutes on their way to visit his mother-in-law in California.
“It’s a big feeling,” said Alvarez, 43, who lives in Ensenada, Mexico, a two-hour drive from San Diego. Prior to the pandemic, his family would visit California twice a month. The emotional cost of the border restrictions were “very high,” he added.
American citizens and permanent residents were always allowed to enter the U.S., but the travel bans grounded tourists, thwarted business travelers and often keep families far apart. Travelers must have proof of vaccination and a negative COVID-19 test.
“I think a lot of people have been waiting for this day,” said Eileen Bigelow, area port director for Vermont for Customs and Border Protection. “They look at it as a light at the end of the tunnel for some return of normalcy.”
There were lots of prolonged hugs at airports from coast to coast. At Newark International Airport in New Jersey, Nirmit Shelat repeatedly embraced his girlfriend, Jolly Dave, after she arrived from India, ending their nine-month separation. She was on the first flight out of the country to the United States.
“I can’t even explain in my words how happy I am," Dave said.
Gaye Camara, who lives in France, last saw her husband in New York in January 2020, not knowing it would be 21 months before they could hold each other again.
“I’m going to jump into his arms, kiss him, touch him,” said Camara, 40, as she wheeled her luggage through Paris’ Charles de Gaulle airport, where the humming crowds resembled those before the pandemic, except for the face masks.
Read:US gives final clearance to COVID-19 shots for kids 5 to 11
On the U.S. borders with Mexico and Canada, where traveling back and forth was a way of life before the pandemic, the reopening brought relief. Malls, restaurants and shops in U.S. border towns were devastated by the lack of visitors from Mexico.
San Diego Mayor Todd Gloria, flanked by U.S. and Mexican officials at a celebratory news conference at the San Ysidro crossing, said the economic losses were hefty and the cutting of family ties “immeasurable.”
Retail sales in San Ysidro fell about 75% from pre-COVID levels, forcing nearly 300 businesses to close.
Edith Aguirre of Tijuana took off work to go shopping in San Diego. Bubbling with laughter, she accepted a gift bag from a duty-free store at the San Diego border crossing. She was a regular at SeaWorld in San Diego and last came to the U.S. to celebrate her 50th birthday at Disneyland in February 2020.
“It was very draining,” she said of the interruption to her cross-border life.
Sales dropped in half at David’s Western Wear shop in Nogales, Arizona, which manufactures boots popular among Mexicans.
Owner David Moore hopes his specialty products lure back customers, but he said it won't happen overnight. Many Mexicans are still trying to get expired visas renewed amid a backlog. Those who do come may be disappointed to find shelves empty because of supply chain problems.
“I really don’t think Mexican shoppers are going to come across in hordes because they have now gotten used to buying a lot of products they need in Mexico," he said.
David Jerome, president and CEO of the El Paso Chamber of Commerce on Mexico's border in Texas, said: “It won’t come back as quickly as it was shut off.”
Still, “we feel like we’re getting our neighbors back and we’re glad to get people going back to work," Jerome said.
Along Canada's boundary, cross-border hockey rivalries were upended by the travel restrictions. Churches that had members on both sides of the border were suddenly cut off from each other.
But on Monday, border traffic quickly returned.
At Vermont’s busiest international crossing with Canada, U.S. border agents said they began to notice the uptick in border crossing shortly after midnight. By mid-morning, traffic appeared steady.
Travelers at the Peace Bridge in Buffalo, New York, one of the northern border's busiest crossings, found a 2½-hour wait at 2 a.m., officials said, though within a few hours traffic was flowing more freely. The bridge typically handles about 2 million passenger vehicles from Fort Erie, Ontario, yearly, many of them bound for the region’s shopping malls, ski slopes and sporting events. Volume dropped by more than 90% during the pandemic.
Read:US details new international COVID-19 travel requirements
River Robinson’s American partner wasn’t able to be in Canada for the birth of their baby boy 17 months ago. She was thrilled to hear about the U.S. reopening and planned to take the child to the U.S. for Thanksgiving.
It’s “crazy to think he has a whole other side of the family he hasn’t even met yet,” said Robinson, who lives in St. Thomas, Ontario.
Airlines are preparing for a surge in activity — especially from Europe — after the pandemic and resulting restrictions caused international travel to plunge.
The 28 European countries that were barred made up 37% of overseas visitors in 2019, according to the U.S. Travel Association. As the reopening takes effect, carriers are increasing flights between the United Kingdom and the U.S. by 21% this month over last month, according to data from travel and analytics firm Cirium.
In a sign of the huge importance of trans-Atlantic travel for airlines, British Airways and Virgin Atlantic celebrated the reopening by synchronizing the departures of their early morning flights to New York on parallel runways at London’s Heathrow Airport.
Maria Giribet, 74, who lives on the Mediterranean isle of Majorca was headed to San Francisco where she planned to “suffocate" her twin grandchildren with hugs after missing half their lives. Gabriel and David are now 3½.
The U.S. will accept travelers who have been fully vaccinated with any of the shots approved for emergency use by the World Health Organization, not just those in use in the U.S. That’s a relief for many in Canada, where the AstraZeneca vaccine is widely used.
But millions of people around the world who were vaccinated with Russia’s Sputnik V, China’s CanSino or other shots not approved by the WHO will not be able to travel to the U.S.
Testing and quarantine requirements remained obstacles for others. A mobile testing truck was parked near the Peace Bridge in New York, promising results in 30 minutes for $225 and next-day results for $160.
Marcela Picone, 39, of the Buffalo suburb of Williamsville, has been waiting for the day her fiancé and father of her 2- and 3-year-old children can visit from Stoney Creek, Ontario. But his 15-year-old son would have to miss school to quarantine upon their return if they traveled.
“He’s a dad to two American kids," she said. "He should have had the right to come into this country the entire 19 months.”
Mourning starts as Houston officials probe concert deaths
Investigators Sunday worked to determine how eight people died in a crush of fans at a Houston music festival, as families mourned the dead and concertgoers recounted the horror and confusion of being trapped in the crowd.
Authorities planned to use videos, witness interviews and a review of concert procedures to figure out what went wrong Friday night during a performance by rapper Travis Scott. The tragedy unfolded when the crowd rushed the stage, squeezing people so tightly they couldn’t breathe.
Billy Nasser, 24, who had traveled from Indianapolis to attend the concert, said about 15 minutes into Scott’s set, things got “really crazy” and people began crushing one another. He said he “was picking people up and trying to drag them out.”
Nasser said he found a concertgoer on the ground.
Read:Houston leaders seek clues for concert mishap that killed 8
“I picked him up. People were stepping on him. People were like stomping, and I picked his head up and I looked at his eyes, and his eyes were just white, rolled back to the back of his head,” he said.
Over the weekend, a makeshift memorial of flowers, votive candles, condolence notes and T-shirts took shape outside at NRG Park.
Michael Suarez, 26, visited the growing memorial after the concert.
”It’s very devastating. No one wants to see or hear people dying at a festival,” Suarez said. “We were here to have a good time — a great time — and it’s devastating to hear someone lost their lives.”
The dead, according to friends and family members, included a 14-year-old high school student; a 16-year-old girl who loved dancing; and a 21-year-old engineering student at the University of Dayton. The youngest was 14, the oldest 27.
Houston officials did not immediately release the victims’ names or the cause of death, but family and friends began to name their loved ones and tell their stories Sunday.
Thirteen people remained hospitalized Sunday. Their conditions were not disclosed. Over 300 people were treated at a field hospital at the concert.
City officials said they were in the early stages of investigating what caused the pandemonium at the sold-out Astroworld festival, an event founded by Scott. About 50,000 people were there.
Authorities said that among other things, they will look at how the area around the stage was designed.
Julio Patino, of Naperville, Illinois, who was in London on business when he got a middle-of-the-night call informing him his 21-year-old son Franco was dead, said he had a lot of questions about what happened.
“These concerts should be controlled,” Patino said. “If they don’t know how to do that, they should have canceled the concert right then, when they noticed there was an overcrowd.” He added: “They should not wait until they see people laying down on the floor, lifeless.”
Steven Adelman, vice president of the industry group Event Safety Alliance, which was formed after the collapse of a stage at the Indiana State Fair in 2011 killed seven people, helped write industry guidelines widely used today.
He said investigators will examine the design of the safety barriers and whether they correctly directed crowds or contributed to the crush of spectators. He said, too, that authorities will look at whether something incited the crowd besides Scott taking the stage.
Adelman said another question is whether there was enough security there, noting there is a nationwide shortage of people willing to take low-wage, part-time security gigs.
“Security obviously was unable to stop people. Optically, that’s really bad-looking,” he said. “But as for what it tells us, it’s too early to say.”
Read:8 dead, several injured at Astroworld Festival in Houston
Contemporary Services Corp., headquartered in Los Angeles, was responsible for security staff at the festival, according to county records in Texas. Representatives for the company — which advertises online as being “recognized worldwide as the pioneer, expert and only employee owned company in the crowd management field” — did not immediately respond to emails and phone messages seeking comment.
Houston police and fire department officials said their investigation will include reviewing video taken by concert promoter Live Nation, as well as dozens of clips from people at the show.
Officials also planned to review the event’s security plan and various permits issued to organizers to see whether they were properly followed. In addition, investigators planned to speak with Live Nation representatives, Scott and concertgoers.
Izabella Ramirez of Texas City was celebrating her 21st birthday and said that once Scott came on stage, no one could move.
“Everybody was squishing in, and people were trying to move themselves to the front. You couldn’t even lift up your arms,” Ramirez said.
Ramirez said a security guard pulled her over the barricade, while her date, Jason Rodriguez, lifted her up.
“Everyone was yelling for different things. They were either yelling for Travis or they were yelling for help,” Rodriguez said.
On video posted to social media, Scott could be seen stopping the concert at one point and asking for aid for someone in the audience: “Security, somebody help real quick.”
There is a long history of similar catastrophes at concerts, sporting events and even religious events. In 1979, 11 people were killed as thousands of fans tried to get into Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum to see a concert by The Who. Other past crowd catastrophes include the deaths of 97 people at a soccer match in Hillsborough Stadium in 1989 in Sheffield, England, and numerous disasters connected with the annual hajj pilgrimage in Saudi Arabia.
Experts who have studied deaths caused by crowd surges say they are often a result of too many people packed into too small a space.
Also Sunday, at least two of the first of many expected lawsuits were filed on behalf of a man injured in the crush of people in state court in Houston. Attorneys for Manuel Souza sued Scott, Live Nation and others, saying they were responsible. Another lawsuit was filed on behalf of Noah Gutierrez by Ben Crump, a civil rights lawyer who has represented the families of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor and other Black people killed by police.
In a tweet posted Saturday, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated by what took place.” He pledged to work “together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”
Houston leaders seek clues for concert mishap that killed 8
Authorities said they would watch video, interview witnesses and review concert protocols to determine how eight people died at a Houston music festival when fans suddenly surged toward the stage to watch rapper Travis Scott.
City officials said Saturday they were in the early stages of investigating the pandemonium that unfolded Friday evening at Astroworld, a sold-out, two-day event in NRG Park with an estimated 50,000 people in attendance. One attendee said that as a timer clicked down to the start of Scott’s performance, the crowd pushed forward.
“As soon as he jumped out on the stage, it was like an energy took over and everything went haywire,” concertgoer Niaara Goods said. “All of a sudden, your ribs are being crushed. You have someone’s arm in your neck. You’re trying to breathe, but you can’t.”
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Goods said she was so desperate to get out that she bit a man on the shoulder to get him to move.
The dead ranged in age from 14 to 27, and 13 people were still hospitalized Saturday, Mayor Sylvester Turner said. He called the disaster “a tragedy on many different levels” and said it was too early to draw conclusions about what went wrong. Dozens were injured.
“It may well be that this tragedy is the result of unpredictable events, of circumstances coming together that couldn’t possibly have been avoided,” said Judge Lina Hidalgo, Harris County’s top elected official. “But until we determine that, I will ask the tough questions.”
Experts who have studied deaths caused by crowd surges say they are often a result of density — too many people packed into a small space. The crowd is often running either away from a perceived threat or toward something they want, such as a performer, before hitting a barrier.
G. Keith Still, a visiting professor of crowd science at the United Kingdom’s University of Suffolk, has testified as an expert witness in court cases involving crowds. He said he usually does not look at eyewitness reports in the early stages of analyzing an incident because emotions can cloud the picture, and witnesses can see only what’s immediately around them.
Based on fire codes, the venue could have held 200,000 people, but city officials limited the attendance to 50,000, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña said.
“It was the crowd control at the point of the stage that was the issue, especially as the crowd began to surge toward the stage,” Peña said.
The deaths called to mind a 1979 concert by the Who where 11 people died as thousands of fans tried to get into Cincinnati’s Riverfront Coliseum. Other past crowd catastrophes include the deaths of 97 people in an overcrowded Hillsborough Stadium in 1989 in Sheffield, England, and numerous disasters connected with the annual hajj in Saudi Arabia.
Read: US mandates vaccines or tests for big companies by Jan. 4
People in the Houston crowd reported lots of pushing and shoving during the performances leading up to Scott’s set.
Then when Scott took the stage, the crowd seemed to rush to the front, trying to get closer to the stage, said Nick Johnson, a high school senior from the Houston suburb of Friendswood who was at the concert.
“Everyone was passing out around you, and everyone was trying to help each other. But you just couldn’t move. You couldn’t do anything. You can’t even pick your arms up,” Johnson said. “It just got worse and worse.”
Johnson said fans started to crush each other, and people started screaming. He said it felt like 100 degrees in the crowd.
Scott seemed to be aware that something was going on in the crowd, but he might not have understood the severity of the situation, Johnson said. A social media posting shows fans who appear to be dozens of rows from the stage chanting “stop the show” while Scott is performing. Another post shows two fans climbing a ladder aboard a platform and asking a cameraman to do something.
On video posted to social media, Scott could be seen stopping the concert at one point and asking for aid for someone in the audience: “Security, somebody help real quick.”
In a tweet posted Saturday, Scott said he was “absolutely devastated by what took place last night.” He pledged to work “together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”
Amy Harris, a freelance photographer for The Associated Press, described an “aggressive” crowd atmosphere throughout the day because of the way fans were behaving — pushing and rushing the stage barricades and prohibited VIP and admission areas.
“It was definitely the most chaotic festival environment that I’ve been in,” Harris said. “I felt uneasy all day.”
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said his department noticed attendees “going down” at 9:30 p.m. and immediately notified concert organizers. The event was called off 40 minutes later after discussions that included the fire department and officials with NRG Park.
Finner defended the amount of time it took for the event to be canceled.
“You cannot just close when you’ve got 50,000 — over 50,000 — individuals, OK?” Finner said. “We have to worry about rioting — riots — when you have a group that’s that young.”
At one point, Gerardo Abad-Garcia was pressed so tightly into the crowd that he could not move his arms off his chest. During the performance that came before Scott’s, he started getting concerned for his safety.
“I just couldn’t breathe. I was being compressed,” he said. A security guard helped him and others climb a fence and get out.
He described the crowd during Scott’s set as a wave that was “going forward and backward.” He said some people tried to help those who were passed out on the ground, while other concertgoers seemed to ignore them and continued watching the show.
Some audience members said barricades erected near the stage and to separate different sections of ticket holders prevented fans from escaping.
Billy Nasser described an area created by a stage barricade as a closet that people were thrown into and the door was shut. Joshua Robinson said the barricades created an area that “was just way too small and compact” for the number of people there.
Part of the investigation will include reviewing how the area around the stage was designed, the fire chief said.
Authorities did not disclose the causes of death, and the dead were not immediately identified.
The police chief said authorities were investigating reports of suspicious activity in the crowd, including a security officer who told police that he felt a prick in his neck during the chaos and lost consciousness while being examined by first responders. He was revived by the opioid antidote Narcan.
Scott, one of music’s biggest young stars, founded the Astroworld Festival in 2018. The 29-year-old Houston native has been nominated for eight Grammy Awards. He has a 3-year-old daughter with Kylie Jenner, who announced in September that she’s pregnant with their second child.
Drake joined Scott on-stage at the concert, which was livestreamed by Apple Music.
8 dead, several injured at Astroworld Festival in Houston
Officials in Texas say at least eight people are dead and several others injured in a crowd surge at the Astroworld Festival.
A compression of the crowd toward the stage occurred just after 9 p.m. Friday while rapper Travis Scott was performing, Houston Fire Chief Samuel Peña told reporters at a news conference.
“The crowd began to compress towards the front of the stage, and that caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries,” the fire chief said. “People began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic.”
Read: Gun attack on madrasa in Cox’s Bazar Rohingya camp; 6 dead
The show was called off shortly after several people began suffering injuries.
Officials transported 17 people to the hospital, including 11 who were in cardiac arrest, Peña said. Many people were also treated at the scene at NRG Park, where a field hospital had been set up.
Approximately 50,000 people were in attendance at the festival, Peña said.
The fire chief added that officials did not immediately know the causes of death for the eight people who died. A medical examiner would investigate. The deceased had not been identified as of early Saturday.
Officials set up a reunification center at a hotel for family members who had not been able to reach relatives in attendance at the festival.
Read: German court sentences mother to life for killing her 5 kids
Astroworld is a two-day music festival that was scheduled to take place Friday and Saturday in Houston. The event was sold out, according to the Astroworld website.
The event promoters had arranged for medical units to be on scene at the festival, however once the crowd surge began, those units were “quickly overwhelmed,” Peña said.
More issues, less Trump: GOP sees model after Virginia win
Since the day he rode down a golden escalator and announced his candidacy for president, Republicans have struggled with how to deal with Donald Trump.
But after Glenn Youngkin's stunning victory in the Virginia governor's race — a state President Joe Biden won last year by 10 percentage points — and a strong GOP showing in deep-blue New Jersey's, party leaders believe they have a model that can deliver them big wins in next year's midterm elections.
By tapping into culture war fights over issues like school curricula, the GOP can energize Trump's loyal base. But party leaders believe this week's results demonstrate they can also win back suburbanites who abandoned the GOP during the Trump era by talking about local issues like taxes and keeping the former president at arm's length.
“Clearly Youngkin's win was a boost to Republicans and gives us momentum going into next year," said Asa Hutchinson, the Republican governor of Arkansas, who has not ruled out a run for president in 2024. That, combined with the surprisingly competitive race for governor in New Jersey, “showed that a Republican in this environment, talking about state issues, talking about education, talking about the future, can even win suburban votes and can win the middle.”
As the full extent of Tuesday's voting became clear, the National Republican Congressional Committee, which is focused on retaking control of the House, named 13 more Democratic seats it hoped to flip. The National Republican Senatorial Committee, meanwhile, noted next year's map is weighted heavily toward swing states like Pennsylvania, Arizona and Georgia, which Biden won by far slimmer margins than he won Virginia and New Jersey.
Read:Glenn Youngkin wins in Virginia, dead heat in New Jersey
Other states where Democrats have eyed Senate seats, such as North Carolina and Florida, were carried by Trump in 2020.
“It completely changes the dynamics of the map," NRSC spokesman Chris Hartline said.
The results emboldened some Trump critics like Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican who swept his own blue state and has long stressed the party's need to win back the swing voters and moderates whom Trump alienated.
”That’s the way we’re going to win," Hogan said. "It’s a great road map. You can't double down on failure," he said, arguing that voters “want to hear what you’ll do for them, not for Trump.”
Of course, it remains unclear heading into the midterms whether Republicans will nominate the kind of candidates with the same appeal as Youngkin.
Many GOP primary contests, from Ohio to North Carolina, have been dominated by contenders who have tried to out-Trump one another, including parroting his lies about a stolen election. And the former president has been wading into races, aiming to crown candidates who have faced serious allegations as he has tried to exact revenge on those who crossed him by voting in favor of his impeachment or opposing his efforts to overturn the 2020 election.
One example is Sean Parnell, who is running for the Senate in Pennsylvania with Trump's backing. Parnell's estranged wife this week testified under oath that she had endured years of rage and abuse from him, including being choked until she had to bite him, a newspaper reported. Parnell had emphatically denied her claims.
And while Jack Ciattarelli, the Republican candidate for governor in New Jersey who lost a close vote, made a clear break with Trump, Youngkin did not. Instead, the Virginia Republican deftly handled the former president, persuading him to steer clear of the state, while nonetheless maintaining his support.
Trump endorsed Youngkin and praised him in the race's final stretch, but his involvement in the campaign was limited, including holding a “tele-rally” on election eve in which he spoke for less than 10 minutes. Trump's allies nonetheless made clear to his supporters that there was minimal daylight between the two men when it came to the issues.
John Fredericks, who served as Trump’s campaign chair in the state in 2016 and 2020, hosted Trump on his radio show, and former Trump strategist Steve Bannon appeared at a rally to signal Youngkin’s MAGA bona fides. One GOP strategist noted how Trump had developed a system of code words — like “America first” — that candidates like Youngkin could pick up as a means of signaling to Trump’s base that he was speaking their language.
Read:Virginia governor race emerges as test of Biden popularity
Democratic candidate Terry McAuliffe, meanwhile, flooded the airwaves with ads portraying Youngkin as a Trump acolyte, reminding Republicans that he was one of them.
“Thank you, Terry McAuliffe, for spending the money to help me get out our vote in massive numbers,” Fredericks said. “He got our vote out. We didn't have to."
Beyond Trump, Youngkin tapped into an issue set that appealed both to rural voters in deeply Republican swaths of southwestern Virginia as well as those in the suburbs who agreed with Trump on the economy and other kitchen table issues but were turned off by his tone. He presented himself in chipper campaign ads as a genial, suburban dad in a sweater vest who could appeal to parents.
In particular, he seized on frustrations of parents, many of whom grew incensed over their children’s schools’ refusal to resume in-person classes during the pandemic, and subsequent mask mandates and attendance policies.
But as he promised to increase teacher pay and school budgets, Youngkin also didn’t shy away from the culture war issues that Trump heralded in an effort to portray Democrats as out of the mainstream.
Youngkin sounded the alarm over transgender rights and critical race theory, an academic framework that centers on the idea that racism is systemic in the nation’s institutions and that they function to maintain the dominance of white people. In recent months, it has become a catch-all political buzzword for any teaching in schools about race and American history. Indeed, he went so far as to release an ad featuring a mother expressing outrage that her child had been assigned to read “Beloved,” the Pulitzer Prize-winning novel by Toni Morrison.
Fredericks credited Trump for Youngkin's victory, insisting the Republican wouldn't have won without Trump's base.
“Glenn Youngkin did nothing but embrace our core policies and voters from Day One. So he did nothing to alienate us," he said. “He put together a very simple coalition: Trump voters and angry parents.”
Trump predictably agreed.
“Without that movement, that race wouldn’t have even been close," he said on Fredericks' radio show Wednesday.