Classmates of Brianna Rodriguez say she fell when Astroworld crowd surged

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Thursday, November 11, 2021
Brianna Rodriguez's friends say she fell when Astroworld crowd surged
Brianna Rodriguez was so excited to attend Travis Scott's concert, her friends say. They described the horror they felt as the crowd crushed and trapped them, taking her life.

HOUSTON, Texas (KTRK) -- Classmates of Brianna Rodriguez, who died following the Astroworld music festival, are remembering her final moments.



They were all at the Astroworld festival together and fell to the ground when the crowd surged.



"I'm holding her the whole time but we fell back and we landed on our backs on the bottom of the pile," said her friend, 17-year-old Xavier Neal. "She's telling me about how she can't breathe and I'm letting her know I'm here. Like, 'I'm here, just breathe.' But I'm down there, I'm trying to breathe myself. I'm listening to her until I can't hear anymore."



He said the pile of people kept growing, with more people falling.



"As soon as I got out of the pile, I looked for her and I picked her up and I was asking her if she was okay but she wasn't responding, until this one random dude picked her up over her shoulders and carried her to the medic," he said.



In the chaos, the classmates lost each other.



"I have been to plenty of concerts. I've seen Travis maybe three or four times already," said Brianna's classmate, Nathan Moya. "I know people pass out, I had no idea people were going to start getting their heads bashed in and getting trampled on."



McCarthy & Associates is representing both Neal and Moya, who were also injured.



"They were there to have fun and now they're left with lifelong mental scars," said Moya's mother, Lisa Rubalcaba. "There's nothing I can do that will take that away."



"Everybody just loved her. She never talked bad about nobody," said Neal, about Rodriguez. "Everything she did was nice, good, amazing, like 100 percent of the time. Everybody has good memories about her. She was a great person."



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How to deal with emotional trauma from Astroworld Festival tragedy

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