NEW EVIDENCE

By Alejandro Martinez-Cabrera and Kate McGee, Texas Tribune

They looked like rag dolls, Reece Wheeler thought.

One by one, the Astroworld Festival coordinator watched from the command center as unconscious Travis Scott fans were crowd-surfed out of the mosh pit and dumped into the sea of bodies raging before one of the biggest rappers in the last decade performed.

The concert hadn’t even begun.

Wheeler texted Shawna Boardman, the festival’s exterior manager of security, a minute before Scott took the stage:

“There’s panic in people’s eyes,” he wrote. “This could get worse quickly.”

“Yes,” Boardman replied.

Wheeler watched in horror over the next hour as no one stopped the concert. Wheeler texted her again:

“I would pull the plug but that’s just me,” he wrote. “I know they’ll try to fight through but I would want it on the record that I didn’t advise this to continue. Someone’s going to end up dead.”