Police audio recordings have revealed that officers had called to each other for the Astroworld concert to be stopped as people were being crushed in the crowd.
A crowd surge at the sold-out festival of 50,000 people on November 5 left nine people dead and hundreds injured, among them a 9-year-old boy who remained in a medically induced coma.
According to police audio recordings obtained by Houston Chronicle, at least one officer radioed over a police channel that the main stage had been compromised by the crowd surge.
Houston Police Chief Troy Finner has placed the blame on Scott for not canceling the performance after his officers were caught on video milling about next to the stage and recording the rapper on their cellphones after a "mass casualty event" was declared.
The rapper was only a few minutes into his hour-long set at that point.
Recordings showed that law enforcements were virtually instantaneously aware of the growing danger at the event on November 5.
One officer said over the radio channel at 9.21 PM: "Looks like folks are coming out of the crowd complaining of difficulty breathing, crushing-type injuries. Seems like the crowd is compressing on itself."
The chilling police audio from the Astroworld concert can be heard here:
Around nine minutes later, another official said they were at the medical tent. "I'm at the medical tent. There's a lot of people trampled and they're passed out at the front stage," they said, per Houston Chronicle.
A second officer was heard on the recording explaining the disaster: "That crowd is super thick, super dense. If you go in there, this could possibly turn into an officer rescue situation."
Another official later said how they were getting many reports of people getting hurt as well as a report of "a cardiac situation with CPR by the stage".
Soon, the crowd surge became intense and one officer exclaimed how "they have to stop the show because there are people trampled... They're not breathing."
It was just past 10 PM when authorities confirmed that the show was in the process of being shut down.
A registered nurse who gave her name only as Sophie told CBS Mornings on Friday, November 12, that she was near the stage when fell onto another concertgoer and then two other people fell on top of her.
"And at that moment I kind of just told myself, 'if this is the way that I go then this is the way that I go.' Thankfully, some guy helped me up."
After getting to her feet, Sophie went used her medical training to try and help victims, but the first three people she aided were already dead.
Then, she came across a festival attendee named Arturo who was still alive but had a very faint pulse.
"I think he would have died if I didn't get there at the time that I did," she said, recounting witnessing what she described as "disregard for human life".
She then added that concertgoers allegedly stole clothing and electronics left behind by victims.
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