For former Marine Lucas Naccarati, Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival began as “one of the best times” of his life.
Naccarati’s dream day, however, quickly turned into a nightmare after chaos erupted during the rapper’s set, prompting him to perform CPR on two fellow concertgoers in distress.
“I haven’t slept since that night,” he tells PEOPLE. “I probably ate twice in the last three days. I just keep associating it with the kids and the girls [in attendance].”
Eight people, ranging in age from 14 to 27, died at the Friday festival in Houston, and more than 300 were treated for injuries amid an apparent stage rush in the crowd of about 50,000 fans.
Naccarati, 26, lives in Arcadia, California, but made the trip out to Houston on his own in order to “really enjoy” the festival, as he’s a fan of Scott.
When it came time for the rapper’s set, the seven-year Marine Corps veteran positioned himself in the “middle front” of the crowd — and noticed very quickly that things had soon become “really, really packed.”
Lucas Naccarati.Lucas Naccarati
“Everyone was kind of joking about it, and making little remarks like, ‘This is a little intense now,'” he says. “And every minute it just got more intense.”
Once Scott, 30, took the stage, Naccarati, who works in consulting, says the crowd began rushing forward, causing a “mass wave” of people pushing, eventually up against the guard rails, where it became “really, really hectic.”
“People started jumping up and down and just started raging, and people started tripping,” he says. “And when they started tripping, it was like a trickle effect for other people to start tripping. When people started tripping, it was just one of those where it would be physically impossible for you to get out of that… If you fell, you were just screwed.”
At some point, Naccarati says he lost his Vans shoes because he was constantly being stepped on, and was far from the only one — he recalls seeing “hundreds” of pairs of shoes all over the ground, many of which were bloodied and covered in mud.
“Another girl started screaming from the top of her lungs, saying, ‘Please, someone help me. Please, I don’t want to die. Please help me,'” he recalls. “I grabbed her from the back and under her armpits. And I just squeezed her and I was like, ‘Please calm down, it will be OK.’ She just fainted, she just passed out.”
Naccarati had to drag the young woman through about 20 or 30 people to get all the way to the back, but eventually found an opening in which he was able to put her on the floor and administer CPR, as she was “completely unresponsive.”
“I didn’t even have a second thought of my mind,” he says of jumping into action. “I just saw someone in panic, and I just immediately knew, ‘This person needs help.’ I see it as I just did something that I feel like a normal human should do. This girl was in need. Who am I not to help this person?”
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“The guy’s eyes were just completely rolled back, and his lips were just dark,” he says. “He was just bleeding and muddy. I was trying to talk to him, but he had no pulse. I started doing CPR on him, and I did that for about a minute, a minute and a half, but he was not responding to anything. He was just completely lifeless.”
As the crowds continued to grow, Naccarati says he was forced to abandon his life-saving measures or risk getting crushed himself.
“I tried to look for some kind of security guard or medic, but there wasn’t really much that they could do,” he says. “As I was leaving I spoke to a security guard who was like, ‘Oh you probably had a really good time partying, didn’t you?’ Because he saw that I was shirtless and had no shoes. And I was like, ‘Guy, I’m pretty sure someone just died. You need to tell someone.’ … He just didn’t understand. He was like, ‘Oh, OK. OK. For sure, man.’ And he just walked away.”
After searching unsuccessfully for a medic tent, he walked barefoot for about a mile to call an Uber home.
Travis Scott.Erika Goldring/WireImage
Police are investigating, and no charges have been brought, though Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said in a statement on Monday that he met with Scott and his head of security “for a few moments” before he went on stage to discuss public safety concerns.
While other fans have accused Scott of ignoring the crowd’s increasingly desperate cries for help and continuing the show despite the chaotic scene, a source close to Scott previously told PEOPLE that the rapper was unaware of the magnitude of the situation, as “the lights were shining in his eyes and he couldn’t see what was happening.”
source: people.com
