HOUSTON — At least eight people were killed and dozens injured in a crowd crush at a Travis Scott concert at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, according to CNN.


The incident occured on Friday night, November 5, and witnesses said people began being compressed against one another when a countdown timer appeared 30 minutes before Scott began to perform.


With around 50,000 people in the crowd, the pressure got worse and worse as the timer counted down, according to one witness who was eventually crowd-surfed to safety having passed out.


According to CNN, several witnesses noted a lack of medical personnel at the site as many people lost consciousness and some members of the crowd attempted to perform CPR themselves.


While questions remain over why the show was not immediately stopped, witnesses cited by CNN say that for his part Travis Scott did pause the show several times.


Meanwhile, crowd safety expert Paul Wertheimer described how crushes like these occur when people in a crowd are forced to compete against each other for the best location or best area to be. “The crowd was allowed to get too dense and was not managed properly,” he said, according to The Los Angeles Times. “The fans were the victims of an environment in which they could not control.”