Astroworld concertgoer Alex Boro argued the Houston Police Department should be held accountable for the mass casualty incident after he captured video footage of officers allegedly taking selfies during Travis Scott's performance with Drake.
"I was at the front at Astroworld," Boro explained in an exclusive interview with Fox News Digital on Thursday. "I took a video of the cops doing nothing after they supposedly reported it a mass casualty event."
The Houston Police Department said all videos taken at Astroworld and posted online would be "looked at and reviewed" during the investigation, the department's public information officer Kese Smith told Fox News Digital.
It's unclear if the officers in Boro's video were aware of the conditions. A source close to Astroworld previously noted to Fox News Digital that videos of the concert showing police officers taking videos of the performance well after some first responders had been deployed seemingly suggest that even they were unaware of the severity of the situation during the concert.
Boro admitted he didn't know how bad the crowd conditions had gotten at the concert at the time he was filming the incident.
"I didn't know the extent of what was going on," he said. "The cops were just standing there taking selfies, and then all this news came out, and it's crazy how they were doing that when all this other stuff was going on," Boro alleged.
To read more, click here.
Fox News' Melissa Roberto contributed to this post.
Houston Police officers began radioing about "crushing-type injuries" sustained in the crowd at Astroworld shortly after rapper Travis Scott took the stage.
The police radio traffic from the Friday night concert, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, reveals how quickly law enforcement became aware of the rising danger in the throng of concertgoers shortly after the star rapper began performing at the sold-out music festival, which drew about 50,000 people.
To read more, click here.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
San Antonio-based attorney Thomas J. Henry is representing 68 people in a lawsuit against Travis Scott, Drake, Live Nation, and NRG stadium after the rapper's Astroworld music festival turned fatal.
"More and more injured victims are contacting my firm by the hour," Thomas J. Henry said in a press release.
"While we are all still working to understand the full scope of the Astroworld tragedy, I believe the damages suffered by its victims could total in the billions," Henry continued.
As of Thursday, nine people have died from injuries sustained during the concert.
On Nov. 5, Scott was performing on stage in Houston when a reported crowd surge occurred leading to the deaths and injuries of many concert goers.
The rapper has since faced criticism for allowing the show to continue while people were struggling in the crowd. The musician claims he didn't know the severity of the situation.
{{#rendered}}The Texas A&M student, Bharti Shahani, who was critically injured at Astroworld has died, her attorney confirmed on Thursday.
She is the ninth fatality of Houston music festival. Shahani's family attorney confirm she passed on Nov. 10 at 6:50 p.m. She was 22 years old.
On Nov. 5, rapper Travis Scott was performing on stage when a reported crowd surge occurred leading to the deaths and injuries of many concert goers.
Scott has since faced criticism for allowing the show to continue while people were struggling in the crowd. The musician claims he didn't know the severity of the situation.
Click here to read more.
Travis Scott and his team issued a statement to Fox News to further his mission of lending as much support as possible to the victims of the Astroworld Festival that left eight people dead and hundreds more injured.
"Over the last week, Travis Scott and his team have been actively exploring routes of connection with each and every family affected by the tragedy through the appropriate liaisons," the statement reads. "He is distraught by the situation and desperately wishes to share his condolences and provide aid to them as soon as possible, but wants to remain respectful of each family’s wishes on how they’d best like to be connected.
"To those families who would like to reach out directly to his team, please send an email to the below address where we will have a team on hand to assist. AW21information@gmail.com."
Scott previously announced that he had partnered with BetterHelp to offer free therapy to anyone affected by the tragedy. He also plans to pay for the funeral expenses of the deceased.
Almost immediately after Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival performance began, police reportedly started getting reports that people were getting crushed and trampled.
Still, the concert did not stop for roughly an hour.
According to police radio traffic obtained by the Houston Chronicle, law enforcement reportedly began discussing the situation at the front of the crowd just six minutes after Scott took the stage.
"Looks like folks are coming out of the crowd complaining of difficulty breathing, crushing-type injuries,” one official said according to the outlet “Seems like the crowd is compressing on itself.”
Minutes later it became clear that the medical tent was starting to get overwhelmed with people suffering injuries from the densely packed crowd.
“I’m at the medical tent,” one officer radioed in around 9:30 p.m. “There’s a lot of people trampled and they’re passed out at the front stage.”
Later, another officer reportedly said: "We’re getting multiple reports of people getting injured. We have another report of cardiac situation with CPR by the stage.”
{{#rendered}}A young woman described the scary situation she was in when a wave of people knocked her to the ground at Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival performance as more piled on top of her.
Cynthia Lira spoke with The Washington Post saying she arrived with her friends three hours early to Scott’s stage at the festival in order to get a good spot by the front. However, as the performance drew closer, she says the mob of people had her trying to escape before the rapper even took the stage.
Describing the weight of people between her and the side of the crowd as being like “concrete” she told the outlet that she was stuck when Scott took the stage and reportedly instructed the crowd to move from side-to-side.
“In my head, I was like, ‘That’s going to cause people to fall.’ … I was just like, ‘Where is the logic in this man?’” Lira said. “People started falling. It was like a wave coming toward me.”
She said she was knocked down and felt people fall on top of her. As she struggled to breathe or even stand up, she felt a hand and grasped it. She witnessed another woman prone on the ground near her who she believes was trying to call 911. Lira screamed for help but knew she wouldn't be heard over the sound of Scott's show. She passed out believing she was going to die only to wake up moments later, still at the bottom of the crowd.
Fortunately, by that time, paramedics were responding to a nearby person who was unconscious. She followed them outside the crowd and made her way to a medical tent where she was looked at amid dozens of other injured people before reconnecting with her friends, who also suffered injuries.
“I don’t think I can listen to him again,” Lira said of Scott. “It’s just traumatic now. I was literally on the floor, on my deathbed, listening to him.”
A Northeast Ohio father shared the harrowing account of his 17-year-old son suffering injuries during Travis Scott’s performance at the Astroworld Festival.
According to Fox8, Cooper Downerd, 17, is a massive Travis Scott fan who bought tickets to his Astroworld Festival in May and worked odd jobs to raise money for him and his dad to travel from Ohio to Texas for the show.
His father, Todd, told the outlet that they were in the ADA section of the concert due to a recent ankle surgery that Cooper underwent. When his dad left to buy his son a t-shirt, the crowd surge happened and he was unable to find his son.
“At this time, Travis Scott had started and I was trying to push my way through and actually there was a surge of people coming out of that area and they were trying to get out of it because it was so bad and that pushed me back,” Todd explained.
Todd looked for his son before getting a call from him to let him know he was at the medical tent being treated for serious injures.
“He goes ‘Dad, it’s not good. I have a neck brace on’ and I made a beeline and I had to cut through all those people again to try to get to the medical tent and when I got to the medical tent, he was there on a cot, in a neck brace… He had lost his shoes,” Todd explained.
He also noted that his son had footprint marks “all over him” from being trampled.
Cooper was talent to the hospital and released the following day. Doctors in Ohio have diagnosed him with a concussion. However, inside the medical tent, Todd noted that he saw several people weren’t as lucky as his son. He noticed several people having CPR performed on them and believes he may have witnessed CPR be unsuccessful among some victims.
Handwritten activity logs from the Houston Fire Department offer a chilling look at how things unfolded both before and after the deadly crowd surge at the chaotic Astroworld Festival last week.
USA Today obtained the Houston Fire Department’s Activity Log for the day, with entries as early as 8:15 a.m. with reports of masses of people trying to force or sneak their way into the event, which included multiple performers, two stages and carnival rides set up at NRG Park. At that time, police requested riot equipment.
Fire officials listened over the radio to a myriad of dispatches from medical personnel as well as police, recording all significant events. At least 10 times throughout the morning, they heard dispatches of people attempting to rush security and break their way into the event.
By the late afternoon, organizers estimated that 5,000 additional people had snuck their way into the festival. Even before the event, things were dangerous for those in attendance at Astroworld. 262 concertgoers were treated by medical staff prior to Scott taking the stage at 9:15 p.m.
Once things got going and the crowd surged resulting in a situation that led to the deaths of eight people. By 9:35 p.m. firefighters began to pick up on calls reporting the situation was escalating. Twenty minutes later, they heard the first "Reported cardiac in progress.”
Firefighters reportedly decided at that point to mobilize and, within 18 minutes the situation was declared a Mass Casualty Incident, Level 2.”
{{#rendered}}Kyle Green, who was paralyzed after attending a Travis Scott concert in 2017, said he is feeling "tremendous sadness" following the Astroworld tragedy.
On April 30, 2017, the then-23-year-old attended Scott’s concert at New York City’s Terminal 5. He claimed that Scott, 30, encouraged the "absolutely packed" audience to get closer to the stage and even jump from the balcony. Many pushed toward the front whether they were on the balcony or in the mosh pit, said Hershenhorn.
In a video that has since been deleted from Twitter, the star is caught encouraging a different fan to drop down from the second-floor balcony into the crowd below.
"[Kyle] was so upset and saddened by this horrible human tragedy," Green’s attorney Howard Hershenhorn told Fox News.
"He was even angry because this all could’ve been prevented if Travis Scott had learned his lessons from the past, which unfortunately he did not. And so the sadness has been mixed with a great deal of anger because Kyle is fully familiar with Travis’ past escapades. Travis could have avoided this senseless tragedy."
Click here to read more.
Travis Scott appeared to have stopped his music during the deadly Astroworld music festival last week to help a fan in distress, according to a new video being shared on social media.
The concert in Houston, Texas left eight dead, one woman braindead, and a nine-year-old boy in a coma while dozens of other attendees were injured when the crowd reportedly surged during Scott's set.
In a video posted on Twitter, Scott can be heard yelling about a fan passing out and needing medical attention.
Coverage for this event has ended.