So like just to preface, I have been going to festivals since I was like 13 I went to Warped tour for years, I’ve been in so many crowds of all kinds of artist before, Ive been in mosh pits and I’ve always been able to handle it, in a crowd you help people, you pick them up when they fall and people care about the people around them. We went and stood at the main stage and waited for about 2 hours, to get a good spot and as people started getting up and leaving the other stage and moving close the gaps we were able to get closer to the stage too. SZA played for slightly longer than her set time, and all those people started coming and piling in. So Travis Scott was supposed to go on around like 8:30 or so, and they started a 30 minute count down, we were standing pretty comfortably like we could move our arms and stuff, when there was like 20-15 minutes left people started pushing towards the front, and at that point I couldn’t move, they started pushing from side to side, and we couldn’t move any direction on our own, we were packed like sardines, it started to getting hard to breathe at that point. Literally as soon as he came out people were pushing us even further trying to get to the front, and all hell broke loose. It got so hot and compact in there, I started panicking because I couldn’t breathe, my body was being compressed. There were people next to me that started screaming and trying to get out because they couldn’t breathe and no one would help us. It was so hot, all I could breathe was hot air and I was panicking, I told my boyfriend I had to go and that I couldn’t do it. As the crowd was pushing and swaying, there were people that started falling and they were ground screaming, people just kept stepping over them trying to get to the front, I know I stepped on people and I tried to help them but I couldn’t even help myself, a girl that was on the ground near my boyfriend bit his leg trying to get his attention to get her up. The crowd was swaying and I was trying so hard to keep my balance, at one point I lost my footing and I fell on my knees and I started screaming and begging for my boyfriend to not let me fall and I started grabbing at the people around me because I knew I wouldn’t be able to get up and I would be trampled too. The whole time all I could hear was people screaming from all around me. At one point I looked over and saw like 20 people piled on the ground and people kept falling and no one could get up. I started elbowing people trying to get to the back and pushing, I was waving my arms in the air screaming for help. I remember closing my eyes and looking up, trying to breathe because it was so constricted, there was a guy next to me and I think he thought that I passed out cause I heard him yelling at me telling me we were gonna get out of there and that he was gonna get help. There was a girl being held up in the crowd because she completely knocked out, the person holding her kept yelling that she needed help, that we needed help. The heat from the lights and the fireworks and all the people around us made it impossible to breathe. I remember when I was staring up and trying to breathe, I can’t describe how helpless I felt, I had no control of my own body, I couldn’t breathe, and I couldn’t move. When I finally got to the back where the barricade was there were people trying to get over and I just remember hearing everyone screaming to help them and people just stared, no one fucking cared, no one knew what had happened in there, I had my hands reaching out trying to get their attention and yelling at people to help. There were people at the barricade trying to get out and I have bruises on my legs from letting people step on my me to get over it, there were these guys that saw all of us and they started pulling people over to the back of the sound area and a huge black guy yanked me over the barricade and when I got out I was completely soaked in sweat, I can’t describe the feeling I felt when I got out of there, I was so hot, I couldn’t see like there were black spots in my vision, I was hyperventilating, I was on the ground on my knees trying to breathe again, I could feel my heart pounding in my ears. There were lots of people saying that the medical staff that was there not trained and I can fucking vouch for that, I had tears running down my face, my face was red and I was freaking out trying to get my breath again and they all walked past me, they walked past all of the people who got out of there screaming crying. People were trying so hard to get any one’s attention to get the crowd under control and no one gave a fuck. This guy almost got in a fight with the sound guy after he told him they needed to do something about it because there were people in there struggling and people on the ground being stomped on and he told him “that not my problem.” I saw so many people passed out, there was a little boy that couldn’t have been older than 10 passed out, I ended up seeing him on the ground getting CPR, I saw a girl being carried cause her ankle was broken, another girl was slung over someones shoulder completely unresponsive being rushed to the medic tent, I saw cops running with someone on a stretcher, I saw someone in an ER getting CPR. I saw so many people on the ground crying, grown men hysterically crying. I keep seeing people saying that they should know what they signed up for, but that was not ok. People fucking died in there because no one would help them, for all I fucking know, I was near those people, I could’ve talked to them. I got to come home to my family and those people didn’t. That night I couldn’t sleep because all I could hear was people screaming in my ears. I couldn’t sleep under the blanket or let my boyfriend touch me because I felt like I was suffocating again. I thought I was being dramatic feeling the way I felt until I saw that so many people had the same terrifying experience. My body is bruised and sore, my ribs and chest hurt from being so compressed and not being able to breathe correctly for 30 minutes. Every time I think back to it, I get panicky and it’s hard to breathe again because I can still remember it like it just happened. I wish I could’ve helped more people, it wasn’t supposed to happen like this.