On November 5, 2021, the music festival Astroworld 2021 began with large crowds in attendance. This third year for the festival was advertised to “Open Your Eyes to a Whole New Universe”, but the preventable tragedy that struck opened concert goers’ eyes to a whole new nightmare.
The festival featured many high-profile musical artists, including rapper Travis Scott. Travis Scott is widely known for his style of music and entertainment. It is not a secret that Travis Scott has a history of inciting crowds at his shows to get wild and crazy as well as rush the stage. For Astroworld 2021, Travis Scott was advertised as the main headliner performer.
During Travis Scott’s performance, the large crowd began to surge towards the stage. The crowd consisted of adults, young adults, teenagers, and concertgoers as young as 9 years old. Due to the surge, concertgoers were crushed and trampled. Travis Scott continued his performance despite reported pleas for him to stop the show. Mass hysteria ensued and ultimately nine concertgoers were killed in the chaos with hundreds of others injured.
The incident was video recorded by many concertgoers and staff working the concert have since spoken out about the traumatic experience. Staff and security members for the festival have come forward reporting confusion and poor planning, as well as an inadequate number of staff and a lack of training. There were other early warning signs of problems to arise, especially due to the anticipated size of the festival.
Travis Scott’s history of endangering concertgoers includes an incident in 2015 where he was arrested for disorderly conduct for encouraging concertgoers to rush the stage and climb security barricades. He was also arrested in 2017 for similar conduct. Sadly, Astroworld 2019 resulted in three people being trampled and injured during a crowd rush.
For large festivals, safety is supposed to be the paramount concern due to the risk of a mass casualty event. With large crowds, there are always supposed to be adequate measures in place to ensure that concertgoers would not be placed in harm’s way. Astroworld 2021 was a highly preventable mass casualty event. Abraham Watkins has been hired by nearly a hundred injured concertgoers thus far to investigate this tragedy and to bring the responsible parties to justice.
If you or someone you know has been injured or killed as a result of an accident, please do not hesitate to contact an attorney at Abraham, Watkins, Nichols, Agosto, Aziz & Stogner by calling 713-396-3964 or toll-free at 1-800-594-4884 to see if you or your family have a claim.