Travis Scott didn’t ‘understand full effect’ of Astroworld tragedy until next day: lawyer
Nine people reportedly died on the night of the concert and hundreds were injured.
Travis Scott’s lawyer claims the rapper wasn’t aware of the full scope of the deadly travesty at the Astroworld music festival until the next day.
Nine people reportedly died and hundreds were injured on the night of the concert, which was held at NRG Park in Houston on Nov. 5 at NRG Park. More than 300 people were treated at a field hospital at the event attended by over 50,000 people.
One week after the deadly event, Scott’s attorney Edwin F. McPherson appeared on Good Morning America Friday to speak about the tragedy, PEOPLE reports. McPherson claimed Scott didn’t learn about the mass casualties until the following morning and noted, “We’ve seen footage of police half an hour later just walking about and not looking like it was a mass casualty event.”
“But clearly the important thing is that never got to Travis, that never got to Travis’ crew. He’s up there trying to perform; he does not have any ability to know what’s going on down below, certainly on a mass level,” said McPherson during the interview.
He added, “Travis didn’t really understand the full effect of everything until the next morning. Truly he did not know what was going on,” noting instances when Scott did stop to check on fans during the performance. “Understand that when he’s up on the stage and he has flashpots going off around him and he has an ear monitor that has music blasting through it and his own voice, he can’t hear anything, he can’t see anything.”
Scott is under deep scrutiny since the music festival he created and produced in his hometown turned deadly, theGrio previously reported.
According to a report from TMZ, the “Sicko Mode” rapper left the festival and went to Dave & Buster’s for an after-party once he believed the event had concluded. Scott was allegedly still unaware that there had been fatalities at his concert.
Scott and promoter Live Nation are now facing more than 100 lawsuits filed on behalf of victims of the Astroworld tragedy, attorneys Ben Crump and Alex Hilliard announced Friday at a news conference in Houston, TheWrap reports.
A 9-year-old boy is currently fighting for his life in a medically induced coma at Texas Children’s Hospital after being crushed by the crowd at the festival, theGrio previously reported. In a statement, Crump noted that the “suffering that this family is going through is immeasurable.”
“This little boy had his whole life ahead of him,” he wrote, “a life that is currently hanging in the balance because of the reckless mismanagement that ensued at the Astroworld Festival.”
Meanwhile, McPherson noted in a statement to PEOPLE that city officials “have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements” regarding what went down at the event.
“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,’ ” McPherson continued. “Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.”
Finner stressed at a press conference Wednesday that local officials did not have the power to shut down Scott’s event.
“The ultimate authority to end the show is with the production and the entertainer,” he said.
This article contains additional reporting from theGRIO’s Biba Adams.
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