As the number of lawsuits rapidly rises against Travis Scott and the organizers of his Astroworld Festival following the tragic crowd surge last weekend in Houston, the rapper’s attorney has issued a statement on all of the “finger-pointing” that has taken place in the direct aftermath of the incident.
Image via HNHH. Photo shot by @frankievergara_
“There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements,” said Scott’s Attorney Edwin F. McPherson. “Houston Police Chief Troy Finner was quoted in the New York Times as saying ‘You cannot just close when you got 50,000 and over 50,000 individuals. We have to worry about rioting, riots, when you have a group that’s that young.’ Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.
It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew. This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.
Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”
Additionally, videos and photos have shown police officers taking videos and photos of Travis’ performance as Drake arrived on stage. According to timestamps from screenshots in the video, the officers were pictured separate times at 9:57pm and 10:02pm, nearly thirty minutes after the “mass casualty” situation was announced, showing them enjoying the show in the front row.
Over forty-six lawsuits have been filed against Travis and the festival organizers after eight people died at his concert, and hundreds more were injured. What do you think of Travis’ attorney’s statement?