Following the catastrophe, eight people died and four individuals filed lawsuits claiming they were injured at the Astroworld Festival.
All three claims list Travis Scott, who produced and headlined the event, as a defendant.
At least eight people, ranging in age from 14 to 27, perished at the event, and 13 others are said to be hospitalized with critical injuries.
The sequence of events that resulted in the fatalities is still unknown, but video recordings and eye witness accounts indicate that fans were being crushed in the tightly packed area as concertgoers rushed toward the stage during Scott’s performance.
The first to sue in the aftermath of the “mass-casualty” event that occurred on Friday night was Manuel Souza, who claimed he had been injured during the mayhem.
In the complaint Souza accused Scott, ScoreMore, and Live Nation — the concert company that organized the event — of fraud.
According to the complaint, the festival organizers flagrantly disregarded potential hazard signals, including a detachable platform that suddenly fell into place for no apparent reason.
According to Souza, numerous witness videos that were released on social media during the weekend depict concertgoers “breaking a security fence around the park, rushing into the grounds, and trampling over one another” early in the day.
The lawsuit claims that the event’s organizers should have stopped the show and pulled it from the air after seeing how severely injured people were being treated.
According to the complaint, those in charge of the event were aware of “the extreme risk of damage to concertgoers that was increasing by the minute,” and they “made a deliberate decision to let the show continue.”
The lawsuit claims that after the actors decided to continue performing, the situation gradually worsened into a full brawl that resulted in at least eight deaths and numerous injuries.
According to Souza’s lawsuit, the tragic event was a direct result of “a profit-driven motive at the expense of concertgoers’ health and safety” as well as “encouragement of violence” by Scott himself.
The organizers are being sued for negligence and gross negligence, with Souza demanding at least $1 million in compensation. In addition, he is seeking a temporary restraining order against the event’s organizers to ensure that any evidence is not destroyed.
Following Souza’s lawsuit, additional victims of the concert accident have come forward, with attorney Ben Crump announcing on Monday that he is representing others.
Kristian Paredes and Patrick Stennis, like Souza, are suing Live Nation and ScoreMore for negligence.
Paredes’s lawsuit, however, alleges that musician Drake, who performed at the event, “came on stage alongside Travis Scott and assisted in creating a frenzy.”
Paredes’ lawsuit appears to lay blame on the performers by alleging that they “either were aware or should’ve been aware of the crowd’s response and had it.”
According to the lawsuit, organizers of the event should have considered Scott’s reputation for permitting and encouraging misbehavior when planning the music festival.
Scott has built a reputation for hosting notoriously wild live concerts at which concertgoers are encouraged to “rage” in the crowd and participate in mosh pits and crowd-surfing.
After the events of Friday, many have observed that Scott’s song lyrics “encourage violence and injury at his shows.” In “Stargazing,” a 2018 track, Scot rhymes, “And it isn’t a mosh pit without any injuries / I’m leaping them out the nosebleeds.”
The song’s title is a direct quote from one of the lines in the song. The lyrics are apparently a reference to an event that occurred in 2017, when Scott appeared to encourage a fan to leap off a balcony at his show in New York.
An attorney for a man who was left partially paralyzed after attending a Travis Scott concert in the same year argued that the events on Saturday at Astroworld were tragic, but not unexpected, given Scott’s history of inciting mayhem at his concerts.
Scott has previously been held accountable for his live performances, with him pleading guilty to misdemeanor charges on two occasions owing to them.
In 2015, after he reportedly encouraged fans to climb over security barriers and stage on the Lollapalooza music festival in Chicago, Scott pled guilty to charges of reckless conduct.
According to the AP, he was accused of inciting a riot at a performance in Arkansas after urging fans to push past security two years later. As a consequence, he was charged with disorderly conduct.
In fact, this event was depicted in Scott’s 2019 Netflix film Look Mom I Can Fly, which chronicled the events that led up to his arrest and subsequent release from jail.
Scott can be heard apologizing to people who were harmed during his event on his way home from jail, stating that he felt terrible about “kids getting hurt and stuff.”
The Netflix film, on the other hand, goes on to directly respond to Scott’s live performances’ chaotic nature. A member of Scott’s crew can be seen telling venue employees and security that they should anticipate mayhem and injuries in the crowd before the Arkansas performance that resulted in his arrest.
“Kids push up against the front and spread all the way across it,” he continues. “Against the barrier, the pressure becomes quite severe.”
“You’re going to see a lot of crowd surfers, but you’ll also see a lot of youngsters who are just trying to get out and get to safety because they can’t breathe,” he continues.
‘I’m not sure,’ he says. ‘You won’t know how terrible it could be until we turn it on.’
During the film’s opening ten minutes, a montage from it depicts live performance footage, with one spectator describing his experience as “mental,” before stating that he “thought [he] was going to die” in the chaos.
In a statement released on Saturday, Governor Rick Scott said he was “totally devastated” by the events that occurred at Astroworld over the weekend. He also vowed to “heal and support the families in need.”
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