SAN ANTONIO — Adrian Perales’ iPhone captured the thousands of fans counting down with a timer right before Houston artist Travis Scott headlined his third annual Astroworld Festival at NRG Park in Houston. 

“Three, two, one!” they shouted. 

Scott, born Jacques B. Webster, shouted “let’s go,” before he opened with his latest track, titled “ESCAPE PLAN.”

That was the last video Perales captured before the night ended with at least eight dead and dozens injured. 

Perales says he felt like he was hit by a truck. 

“It’s something that I don’t want to ever experience again because it was very traumatizing to see things that you should never see ... that you don’t want to see at all,” Perales said while driving back to his home. 

Angie Hinojosa was sitting in the passenger seat and they agreed that it's a major understatement to say they are grateful to be alive. 

They drove into San Antonio on Sunday right before the sun went down and made time to share their traumatic experience with Spectrum News 1. 

“And so where we started was somewhat in the middle of the crowd, but in the middle barricades,” Hinojosa said. “So we weren’t even that close to the front yet and we were already feeling a ton of pressure from the thousands and thousands of people still coming in.” 

Another video Perales shared with Spectrum News 1 was during Houston rapper Don Toliver’s set. It was captured at around 4:30 p.m. — four and a half hours before Scott even took the stage. In the video, there’s a young woman in a blue shirt pressed against the fence with no room to move. 

“So many bodies were compressed against ours and it was just getting harder to breathe. It was so much bodies on top of bodies and then waves of people falling and moving and pushing and shoving,” Hinojosa said. 

Perales spent five and a half years in the United States Army Special Operations Command. 

“We had to experience a lot of things to survive and evade, and if somebody gets hurt and if somebody gets in a tight position, how do you do chest compressions? How do you do mouth-to-mouth?” Perales said. 

He never thought he would need to use these survival skills at a music festival. However, when he and Hinojosa couldn’t lift their arms and the cries for help echoed throughout NRG stadium, he went into survival and rescue mode. 

“Then I had people next to me - a girl, a female, or another male - and he’s yelling ‘I’m stuck, I’m stuck, I can’t breathe,’” Perales explained. “And I’m like hey, control your breathing, you’ll be OK. If you don’t start breathing, you are going to hit panic mode. Your body is going to tell you I’m done, and you are going to be in cardiac arrest.” 

He says security kicked him out after he saved people over the barricade. 

“All security said was, ‘if you don’t have a medical condition or [are] passed out, we are not going to help you get out the rails.’ Which is wrong because if someone is yelling, ‘Help me, help me, help me, I’m scared, I’m fighting for my life,’ and you ignore them, then that’s not going to have a good representation of who you are,” Perales said. 

Perales attended Astroworld in 2018 and still has the video in his iPhone’s camera roll. He says the difference between the 2018 and 2021 Astroworld is night and day. 

Perales saw a man receiving chest compressions and noticed his lips and skin turned blue. He believes this is going to have a long-term effect on everyone's mental health, including his own.

“They are going to have anxiety, they are going to have sleepless nights. If they (are asked to) go to a concert, they are going to say ‘no.’ They are going to second guess themselves and ask, is it worth it?” Perales said. 

While Perales and Hinojosa recover mentally and physically, they’re going to lean on that gratitude they talked about earlier.