Rapper Travis Scott and his immediate team have shared a new statement via email on Thursday following the tragic crowd surge at Astroworld Festival last weekend in Houston, Texas, which left eight people dead and hundreds more injured. The statement, which can be found below, communicates Travis' current emotional state several days after the tragedy, and also includes a means for families of the victims to reach out to his camp.
"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. 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."
This comes following a statement made from Travis Scott's attorney Edwin F. McPherson earlier on Thursday, which reads:
"There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements. 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.' Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.
It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew. This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.
Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again."
More than forty-six lawsuits have been filed against Travis Scott and the festival's organizers in the direct aftermath of the tragedy. Scott announced that he was going to refund every Astroworld ticket, as well as provide free mental health support for anybody affected by partnering with BetterHelp. He also canceled his upcoming performances in Las Vegas and Saudi Arabia.
We will continue to keep you up-to-date on the latest news surrounding the tragedy at Astroworld Festival.