Michelle and Brian Dubiski doted on their two children, always trying to make sure they were safe. But on the night of November 5, 2021, the Dubiskis panicked. Both their children were at NRG Park for the highly anticipated Astroworld Festival featuring rapper Travis Scott. As the night wore on, their kids got separated in the crowd.
Only one would come home.
Because of that night’s chaos 10 people including 23-year-old Madison Dubiski eventually died and hundreds were injured, caught in a crush of excited fans surging toward the stage where Scott was performing at the outdoor music festival. Madison, a former Cy-Fair High School cheerleader and Ole Miss student, died by asphyxiation — just like the other nine victims, ages 9 to 27.
Today (Tuesday), Netflix presents its documentary Trainwreck: The Astroworld Tragedy, which rehashes the catastrophe including accounts from injured survivors and other attendees.
The Dubiskis, who did not participate in the film, requested an early viewing and were denied. Both said they plan to watch it. “It’s extremely emotional and will be hard to sit through, I’m sure,” Brian Dubiski said. “I don’t really know what to expect. What I hope it does is shed light on the situation so people can understand we just have to do better.”
From previous reporting and an investigation by the Houston Police Department, it’s known that fans began lining up outside the venue at 5 a.m. and by 8:15 a.m., police had requested riot gear. They wanted help to deal with excited concert-goers who were breaching checkpoints, pulling down barricades and lighting fireworks. Communications broke down as officials from several agencies appeared not to know who was in charge.
Checkpoints were later abandoned as fans knocked over metal detectors and entered the park without wristbands. Several reports of attendees being trampled came in by early afternoon, and EMTs said they were overwhelmed by people suffering from drug overdoses and traumatic injuries.
Some medics who reportedly were not properly trained in CPR sought concert attendees who could assist. This all happened hours before Scott took the stage around 9 p.m.
Spectators say Scott was seemingly oblivious to what was happening, even as ambulances entered NRG Park and concert-goers were crowd-surfed to areas where they could get medical attention. Later in the performance, the rapper asked security to help someone near the stage and later asked attendees to make way for an ambulance moving through the crowd. However, he still did not stop the show at that point.
NRG Park is owned and managed by Harris County Sports & Convention Corporation. Houston and Harris County organized security, with then-Mayor Sylvester Turner saying at the time that more than 1,000 security staff and police were scheduled for the event. According to reports, the exact number of police at the Astroworld Festival was estimated at 530, more than double the number of a 2019 festival at the same location.
“At the end of the day, when you look at any part of this, everyone just points the finger at someone else,” Brian Dubiski said.
In the film trailer, high school students talk about how excited they were about the concert. The visuals show lots of people rushing chaotically through the gates, smoke and haze, and the lights and sirens of emergency responders.
“I was like, oh my God, I can’t take a deep breath,” said one woman interviewed in the documentary.
Eight people were pronounced dead on the night of the concert, and two more died in the hospital in the following days. The Harris County medical examiner determined the deaths were accidental and the cause was compressive asphyxiation. One of the victims was 9 years old and was reportedly crushed and trampled at the festival. The oldest victim was 27.
“You spend your whole life as parents protecting your children, whether they’re walking across the street, holding their hand, et cetera,” Michelle Dubiski said. “You just don’t expect to send your adult children to a concert and one of them doesn’t come home.”
Preventable Safety Failures
The Dubiskis were devastated that their son Ty, 20 at the time and best friends with his older sister, returned home from the Astroworld Festival alone. The family channeled their despair into raising awareness about dangerous festival conditions and launched the Pink Bows Foundation on May 1, 2022, which would have been Madison’s 24th birthday.
The Dubiskis’ research led them to information that the Astroworld Festival wasn’t an isolated incident. More than 700 deaths globally can be attributed to event-related crowd incidents, and 82 percent of those deaths were caused by preventable hazards, according to ACEP Now and the Journal of Pediatric Nursing.
The day after Madison’s death, the Dubiskis saw a makeshift memorial at NRG Park. Someone had placed a pink bow among the tributes and posted a photo with the hashtag #PinkBowsForMadison. The “Pink Bows” theme went viral and became the namesake of the foundation.
“Madison was extremely charismatic. She had an electric personality and a heart of gold,” her mother said. “She was extremely philanthropic. By the time she graduated from high school, she had over 500 volunteer hours with 25 different organizations and charities that were either global or on a local level. She was just amazing.”
Some of the preventable security failures, Madison’s parents say, were that the festival, managed by Live Nation and streamed by Apple Music, had at least 50,000 attendees, too many for the site and the small number of staff assigned to the event. After-action reviews cited logistical challenges and inadequate facilities.
Originally, Madison and Ty were to attend the show with a group of 10 friends but several dropped out because they had strep throat, Michelle Dubiski said. On the night of the concert, Ty was separated from his sister during the crowd surge as Scott took the stage.
“We’d been talking with Madison and Ty throughout the day and throughout the evening and even at the concert until reception was lost,” Michelle Dubiski said. “Messages were not going through. We had received a phone call from one of Madison’s best friends who had gotten a call out of San Marcos that Madison was injured and that we needed to get to her. That was the first we knew that anything was going afoul with the concert at all.”
The “whole night was chaotic and a nightmare,” Brian Dubiski added.
“You always have this gut feeling when something bad happens,” he said. “Ty called us frantic and we’re telling him to go from medical tent to medical tent. He had no idea at that point what had happened. You just have this feeling that overwhelms your body of numbness and fear. Our son is upset. There’s chaos at the venue and we’re all on the phones calling hospitals and the police department, anyone we can get through to, to try to figure out where Madison is.”
That feeling of despair permeated thousands of people that night, Michelle Dubiski said.
“I think the reason why the world is intrigued and affected by the tragedy is due to the fact that it could happen to anybody,” she said. “You think you go to a concert and everything is checked beforehand. The attendees never think anything is going to happen, they’re just going to have a good time.
“There’s been a lot of focus on the 10 deaths,” she added. “What everybody went through on the night of the tragedy was horrific. I’m pretty sure everybody will see that in the documentary. Aside from the 10 deaths, the injuries and the amount of PTSD that people went through was horrific. They have to live with that every day. These are some of the things we hope that, with changes, nobody else will have to go through.”
A May 2022 legal filing outlined 732 claims of injuries that required extensive medical treatment, 1,649 of “less-extensive treatment,” and 2,450 claims where the severity of treatment was under review.
In October 2022, Houston attorney Tony Buzbee announced settlements with several defendants in lawsuits brought by the families of two attendees who died at the concert. The terms and damages were not disclosed.
Despite criticism about poor planning and emergency response, a Harris County grand jury heard the case in June 2023 and declined to indict anyone associated with the Astroworld Festival.
The Dubiskis said no one from Harris County or the City of Houston has ever contacted them.
“I don’t think anyone stood up and took accountability,” Brian Dubiski said. “I think it was probably gaffes across multiple companies and multiple issues. The five [Harris County] commissioners voted unanimously not to have an internal investigation. Why? How do we do better? How do we change it and how do we keep it from happening again?”
Since they weren’t getting any communication from the numerous agencies that supposedly were responsible for controlling the festival and ensuring safety, the Dubiskis moved forward with their foundation to raise awareness and provide training.
Crowd safety experts Steve Allen and Mark Hamilton host trainings for Pink Bows Foundation worldwide. The charity has caught the attention of several concert promoters, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and even Sir Paul McCartney, who expressed his support on social media.
“There’s no formalized training or certification for the person or group that’s responsible for ultimately the biggest decision in a live event, and that’s to stop or pause the show to save lives,” Brian Dubiski said. “I think there’s an overall dynamic of people who want to see change and have a standardized procedure, training and certification specifically starting with the show-stop process.”
The foundation also provides large pink tents where concert goers can sit down, have a cold cup of water, and breathe easily on nice furniture near a 20-ton air conditioning unit. First aid tents can provide a Band-Aid but aren’t necessarily equipped to deal with someone who is experiencing anxiety or a panic attack, Brian Dubiski said.
While Travis Scott was criticized for not stopping the concert once he became aware that the fans were in peril, his management has said he didn’t have the authority to do so. But shortly after the tragedy, videos circulated of numerous musicians who stopped shows because they observed someone fainting or in need of medical attention.
Again, it’s a matter of knowing who’s in charge and what authority each entity has and ensuring the proper training so that a show can at least be paused before the chaos gets out of hand, Brian Dubiski said.
“We’re not trying to be combative,” he said. “We’d love to have relationships with all the largest promoters and have them send their teams to our training. This is obviously a glaring issue that happened at Astroworld, but at the same time, the forklift operator has to be certified. The lights and audio guys and the technicians are certified to do what they do, and again, being able to stop a show, at the end of the day, there is no formalized training and no certifications for that. That’s why we went out and created it.”
“People deserve to be able to go to events and be safe,” he said. “It shouldn’t have happened and hopefully it will never happen again.”
This article appears in Jan 1 – Dec 31, 2025.
