The music world suffered a great tragedy over the weekend when eight people were killed during a crowd crush that occurred during a Travis Scott concert at the rapper’s Astroworld Festival in Houston. In the aftermath of the event, a Linkin Park fan posted video of the band’s Mike Shinoda and Chester Bennington stopping a show in order to help a person in the mosh pit who had fallen amongst the masses. The video has since gone viral on Twitter as people react to the recent tragedy.
A Twitter user named Kari posted the video with the comment, “No, THIS is exactly what’s supposed to be happening in a mosh pit.”
In the video, you see Shinoda stopping a song mid-performance, stating, “Yo! We got a little problem up here.” Bennington, also noticing that a fan has fallen, adds, “Pick him up! Pick him up right now!”
Reinforcing their point, Shinoda comments, “Sorry you guys, we gotta look out for safety first, for real. Nobody gets hurt, that’s number one. We’ll play this s–t, the whole s–t again, if you guys get up, if you guys are all right. OK? Watch yourselves.”
Bennington adds, “Hey, yo, man. We know we’ve been stressing all night about being cool and this is the reason why. Let’s go over it one more time… when someone falls, what do you do?”
The crowd chants back, ”Pick him up!”
In total, eight people died and 17 more were hospitalized due to the crowd crush at the Astroworld Festival that took place at Houston’s NRG Park Friday night (Nov. 5). Around 9:15PM, the crowd started to compress toward the front of the stage, according to Fire Chief Samuel Pena. Medics were performing CPR on victims once they started to fall out from the crowd.
When police realized there was a mass casualty event happening around 9:30PM, police spoke with the promoters and Live Nation, the festival’s organizers, and asked to stop the show early, to which Travis Scott complied. The victims ranged in age from 14 to 27 years old.
Scott had stopped the show a number of times during the night as he witnessed fans in distress and asked security to step in. Some of the musician’s shows in the past have gotten rowdy as well with multiple injuries reported during the 2019 Astroworld Festival after fans jumped a barricade.
The rapper issued a statement following the show that read: “I am absolutely devastated by what took place last night. My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival. Houston PD has my total support as they continue to look into the tragic loss of life. I am committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need. Thank you to Houston PD, Fire Department and NRG Park for the immediate response and support. Love You All.”
There was also a statement from the Astroworld Fest that can be read below.
Scott’s partner, Kylie Jenner, also issued a statement via her Instagram stories that read: “Travis and I are broken and devastated. My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in any way by yesterday’s events. And also for Travis who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community. I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show and in no world would have continued filming or performing. I am sending my deepest condolences to all the families during this difficult time and will be praying for the healing of everyone who has been impacted.”
In the aftermath of the tragedy, Billboard reported that Scott and promoter Live Nation have been sued for $1 million by one of the concertgoers, with the suit claiming the disaster was the direct result of “a motivation for profit at the expense of concertgoers’ health and safety” and the “encouragement of violence.” Two more lawsuits were reported by CBS News as of Monday morning.
While the Linkin Park video did yield a viral response and some responders were ready to take shots for the handling of the concert, it’s important to show compassion. There have been crowd crush deaths at multiple concerts across a variety of genres over the years. An investigation is still ongoing into the cause of how this happened at the Astroworld Fest.
As the original poster of the Linkin Park video later stated, “For the record I shared this to show that mosh pit etiquette does in fact exist, not a ‘well Travis should have done this’ in regards to yesterday’s tragedy. A reminder that we have to work together to keep each other safe at shows.”