As time goes on, we are continuing to learn more of the gruesome and sad details of how things could have gone so wrong at the Astroworld Festival this past weekend.
On Friday, eight people died and hundreds more were injured after being crushed together in an apparent crowd surge at the massive outdoor event. And now, new concerning information about the entire incident — and the (lack of) preparation prior to it — is coming to light.
In a new report published Tuesday morning, TMZ spoke with a man named Darius Williams who purportedly was trained to work as a security guard at the weekend-long Houston-based festival. Williams was one of “the hundreds of people” hired by Contemporary Services Corporation (CSC), the company in charge of security and crowd control for the event. Per a screenshot of a job listing for the role, CSC offered security contractors an hourly wage between $10 and $13 for the work.
Williams claimed the security issues at the event began well before the whole thing started, because CSC’s training allegedly left workers “woefully unprepared” to meet the demands of such a large crowd. The security hire said he was brought on just a couple days before the start of the festival, and the training portion of the job was so vague and poorly done that he was never sure what his role was to be during the concert series. For one, he shared that he and other new employees had to take a licensing exam to become a “Level 2” security officer — but training for the exam was nearly non-existent, and instructors provided all the answers to the test to ensure employees would pass it without problems.
By the time Williams showed up on Friday to work, he “immediately realized they were understaffed and not equipped to handle the massive crowds.” After he claimed he tried expressing his concern to his bosses, they tried to move him from front gate duty to another role — and Williams threw up his hands and walked off, feeling the situation was too unsafe. He’s not the only guard who did that, either; he claims many hired employees walked away from their shifts during the day on Friday to protest poor planning and untenable working conditions.
Wow…
Obviously, hours after Williams and several others reportedly realized there was a major problem brewing, tragedy struck in the worst of ways.
Such a scary situation all around.
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