Astroworld Incident  

 1O people were killed and hundreds more were injured on November 9, 2021, during the music festival “Astroworld” in Houston, Texas owned and hosted by famous rapper Travis Scott. 

Travis named both the festival and his album “AstroWorld” because when Travis was younger, he used to go to a park called “AstroWorld”. According to him this was the best part of his childhood, when the park closed, he was 13. Travis wrote this album with the angle “taking an amusement park away from kids.” 

This is not the first time that accidents happened in a Travis Scott concert, but it is the first time that someone has died. The first time that anything happened was at Lollapalooza, he influenced mosh pits, crowd surfing, stage diving, and also encouraged fans to vault the barricades, these were dangerous acts but luckily no one was injured. After the concert he was arrested and was sentenced to one year in prison for reckless conduct charges.    

Two years after this incident it happened again at the Walmart Arkansas Music Pavilion located in Rodgers, Arkansas. Travis pleaded guilty for disorderly conduct and was urging people in the crowd to rush to the stage. Ordered by the court he had to pay court fees and restitution for two of the victims that were injured including a security guard and a police officer that were working at the event.  

Weeks later, a 23-year-old fan was paralyzed from waist down after allegedly being pushed from a third story balcony during a performance by Travis in New York City. A lawsuit was filed by the fan, but it is still pending in court.   

In the morning of November 5th according to the Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner at the venue there were more than 1,000 security staff and police present. By the afternoon people started to crowd the checkpoint and before 4:00p.m at most 54 patients had been treated or sent to the hospital. According to the Houston police noted that the crowd was in critical condition.  

When the 30-minute timer hit for Travis to start his show there were about 50,000 people at the main stage crowding on each other to get to the front to wait for Travis to start his performance. The Houston Fire Chief Sam Pena told the reporters that as the clock got closer and closer to hit the fans continued to push through each other. Chaos broke out during the first 10 minutes of the performance.  

About 9:25 pm Travis stopped the show for the first time letting everyone know that someone in the crowd needed help, “Somebody passed out right here.” Then he continued to perform but had to stop the show two more times to respond to the chaos that was going on. One of the times he had to stop was also when the ambulance had to drive through the crowd to save the people that had passed out.  

At 9:38 pm according to the Houston Police activity log ambulances and firefighters were at the scene getting people out of the barricade as soon as possible and started to treat people that have been passed out. Apple live streamed the whole show including scenes of people coming out of the barricade by security guards and ambulances, while this was all happening Travis continued the performance.  

One of the victims that were at the concert, Fatima Munoz 21, according to ABC news podcast “Start Here” he described the situation as a “domino effect”.  

“I had fell right on the floor, and that is when everybody started to tumble down, and tried so hard to get up, there is just too many people like on me, like those legit dog pile on me. I was on the floor. Nobody helped. I tried screaming for my life. I tried screaming for help.”  

While everyone was getting out of the barricade Travis did not stop his concert and just continued his set and brought Drake out to sing with him, everyone in the crowd was yelling “Stop the show!” multiple times to attempt to stop the concert, but Scott did not listen. Even one of the fans, Ayden Cruz, went up the ladder to talk to the staff and try to tell them to stop the show. She tried her best to stop it, but the staff did not listen and did nothing. According to Insider at one point of the show Scott said “Who asked me to stop? You all know what you came here to do.”  

At around 10p.m Scoot finally finished his show and left the stage. At this point there were 300 people treated by the medics at the show and 25 were transported to the hospital. On November 6 with was supposed to be day 2 of the festival but it was canceled, on the same day Scott posted an apology video to his Instagram story. This day was when the first lawsuit against Scott was filed. The day after Travis’s girlfriend Kylie Jenner said that Travis was not aware of anything that was happening at the concert, and they are sending their prayers to the families and the victims and are in the hospital. 

On Wednesday, November 9, the ninth victim, 22-year-old Bharti Shahani died from injuries that happened at the festival according to the family. In total 10 people at AstroWorld were killed.  Ezra Blount 9-years old, John Hilgert 14- years-old, Brianna Rodriguez 16-years-old, Jacob Jurinek 20-years-old, Franco Patino 21-years-0ld, Axel Acosta Avila 21-years-old, Bharti Shahani, 22, Rudy Peña 23-year-old, Madison Dubiski  23-years-old, and Danish Baig 27-years-old. 

Ezra one was one of the first victims to die, according to the family died from his injuries. After he went to the hospital, he was placed in a medically induced coma because of injuries he suffered on his brain, kidney, and liver during AstroWorld.  According to the family’s lawyer at least 30 lawsuits were filed by the family against Travis Scott, the producers from the concert, and the venue. 

The day after the incident was supposed to be day 2 of the show but was cancelled because of what happened the day before. By then only 8 out of the 10 people that died were identified. Both Travis and Kylie posted something on their Instagram story, Travis also went to twitter and stated,  

“I’m absolutely devastated by what took place last night,” Scott said in a statement on Twitter. “My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival.” 

The sister of one of the victims, named Jennifer Peña, discussed what actions she felt could have prevented the death of her sister, Ruby Peña. In an interview with Rolling Stone magazine, she commented on Scott’s actions.  

“There are videos of people telling him to stop this concert, and he didn’t. How could he not know? I still think he’s guilty in some sense, in my opinion,” Peña said. “The first minute they told him to stop the concert early, he could have been like ‘Stop.’ He should have been like, ‘Okay,’ and then investigated what was happening. But he continued. I think he could have avoided all of this. He could have stopped the concert and avoided all this death.”