Analysis: What led to the Astroworld tragedy

Rolling Stone looks for the warning signs that showed what might happen, and what in the end did happen at the Nov. 5 Astroworld Festival in Houston’s NRG Park where eight people died. Travis Scott has a history of enticing fans to dangerous behavior - in 2017 he encouraged a fan to jump from a second-floor balcony at Terminal 5, in the summer of 2015 Chicago police arrested him after he urged fans to climb over barricades to go onstage at Lollapalooza. There were warning signs at the venue as well - at 2 p.m. on Nov. 5 fans stampeded by the dozens through a V.I.P. security entrance at Astroworld, knocking over metal detectors, which suggests they weren’t prepared for the kind of crowd they were going to get. NRG Park itself had just experienced what could have been a cue to beef up security: Outside the very same venue on the night of Oct. 24, less than two weeks before Astroworld, young fans of Playboi Carti also reportedly knocked over metal detectors and moved metal barriers outside the venue before the concert — which organizers canceled due to the chaos. Travis Scott and other organizers of the Astroworld music festival in Houston are already facing at least one lawsuit over Friday’s deadly crowd surge, filed by an injured concertgoer who called the incident a “predictable and preventable tragedy”, Billboard reports.