Travis Scott performs at the Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park on Friday in Houston.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

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Amy Harris/Invision/AP

Travis Scott performs at the Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park on Friday in Houston.

Amy Harris/Invision/AP

Eight people died and “scores” were injured, including a 10-year-old child, at an outdoor concert at rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston after the crowd reportedly rushed the stage, authorities said Saturday.

Scott was performing when, shortly after 9 p.m. local time, the crowd began to compress toward the front of the stage, causing panic and some injuries. CPR was performed on several people.

“This is a tragic night,” Houston Fire Chief Sam Peña said at a briefing in the early hours of Saturday morning, noting that an investigation into what happened at the concert is ongoing.

Peña said there were about 50,000 guests in attendance during Scott’s performance. At about 9:38 p.m., 17 patients at the event were transferred to hospitals and 11 of those transferred experienced cardiac arrest, Peña said. The cause of their deaths has not yet been determined.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner was adamant that the cause of the “mass causality event” is still unknown and said that rumors of drug use at the concert were being looked into. Live Nation, the organizer of the concert, is providing authorities with video footage of the incident, Finner said.

The Astroworld Festival, which was scheduled for Friday and Saturday, said they were cancelling events Saturday. The festival posted to Instagram Saturday morning saying, “We are focused on supporting local officials however we can.”

Xavier Watkins attended the event Friday night and said he’s been to all three Astroworld Festivals. But last night’s concert was different than any others he’s experienced.

“I’m 6’3 and I felt bad for the smaller people there cause they were just being swallowed down at first into the crowd,” Watkins said in a text message to NPR. “I was doing my best to help pull people up cause it was also muddy and it was very easy to slip.”

Watkins said there wasn’t enough security at this year’s event and from the security guards he spoke with, many said it was their first time staffing a concert like this.

Scott, a Grammy-nominated rapper and Houston native, launched his Astroworld Festival in 2018. In 2015, Scott was arrested after telling his fans to jump the barricades during his Lollapalooza performance, and in 2017 for encouraging people to rush the stage at a performance in Arkansas. The details of what caused the crowd surge at his latest concert in Houston are still unclear.

“My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival,” Scott wrote in a statement posted to Twitter. “I am committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.”