'We'll protect you': Best friends killed at Astroworld offered to help others before they died
'We'll protect you': Best friends killed at Astroworld offered to help others before they were crushed
"STICK AROUND US, WE'LL PROTECT YOU": Some of the last words of suburban Chicago best friends Jacob Jurinek and Franco Patino, who were killed at the Travis Scott Astroworld concert. A woman who met them at the concert says they offered to help her, but she lost sight of them during the stampede. Natalie Bomke reports.
NAPERVILLE, Illinois - Looking back, Izel Ayala cannot believe that the two young men who offered to protect her during the Travis Scott Astroworld concert ended up being killed.
Ayala met Jacob Jurinek, 21, of Naperville, who was at the concert with his best friend, Franco Patino, who was also 21 and from Naperville.
"They're like, 'We're from Chicago and we're just here for this weekend,'" Ayala said. "As soon as the timer started going down, he's like, 'Stick around us, we'll protect you.'"
Moments after the concert began, Ayala said that people started pushing. She believes that Scott could have stopped it, but didn't. Scott was arrested by Chicago police in 2015 one song into a set at Lollapalooza for urging the crowd to rush the stage.
"We were like, ‘Stop the concert, stop the concert!’ as a group and we also said, ‘Help! Help!’ in between songs," she said. "And he's like, ‘What was that? Oh no you know what we came here to do.’ And he's like, 'Let's rage.'"
Eight people were killed at the concert on Friday and more than 300 were injured. Authorities said that security and medical personnel hired by concert organizers were not enough to handle the crowd of 50,000.
"I'm honestly just devastated. I could never imagine anything like this happening," Scott said Sunday.
Ayala said it was terrifying.
"It wasn't just an up and down jumping motion, it felt like a wave, so you were drifted left and right and I lost sight of Jacob and I lost sight of my sister," she said.
She and her sister made it out alive, but she's sad to know that Jurinek and Patino did not.
"It was just sad knowing that hours ago – 24 hours ago – they were alive, speaking to us and now they're gone," she said.