A night filled with live music and entertainment turned grim Sunday night, when a crowd stampede broke out following a Rochester, N.Y., rap concert that left two dead and one critically injured.

Authorities say the stampede may have been triggered when audience members mistook a loud noise in the venue as gunshots. Grammy-nominated rapper GloRilla and her touring act, Finesse2tymes, had already finished performing at Rochester's Main Street Armory when the surge broke out.

"We are hearing many reports of potential causes, including crowd size, shots fired, pepper spray and more," the Rochester Police Department said in a statement. "Preliminary reports from people at the scene indicate that these injuries were caused from being trampled. We do not have any evidence of gunshots being fired or anyone being shot or stabbed."

GloRilla, a Memphis musician whose song "F.N.F. (Let's Go)" was nominated for best rap performance at the Grammy Awards last month, said she did not hear about the stampede until after she left the venue.

"My fans mean the world to me," she wrote on Twitter. "Praying for their families and for a speedy recovery of everyone affected."

Police discovered three badly injured women upon entering into the venue. One, Rhondesia Belton, 33, from Buffalo, died in a nearby hospital.

"Her family, friends, and colleagues are devastated and left to mourn this tragic loss," Buffalo Mayor Byron Brown said. He added that Belton was a city employee for the Traffic Violations Agency.

Police did not immediately identify the deceased victim, aged 35, but said that one woman remains hospitalized with significant injuries while at least seven additional concertgoers were hospitalized with non-life-threatening injuries.

Rochester Mayor Malik D. Evans called the incident a "tragedy of epic proportions," during a Monday news conference.

"When you go to a concert, you do not expect to be trampled," he said. "Your loved ones expect you to be able to come home."

Fatal crowd surges and uncouth behavior have become far more common at concert venues across the U.S., most notably in 2021, when 10 people died and many more were injured at rapper Travis Scott's Astroworld festival in Houston. That incident led to a bevy of lawsuits for the touring company and venue and ignited a congressional investigation.

U.S. New York