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Investigation Into Astroworld Crowd Control At Travis Scott Concert

One of the first lawsuits stemming from the concert names concert promoting giant Live Nation, along with rappers Travis Scott and Drake.
Posted at 1:13 PM, Nov 09, 2021
and last updated 2021-11-09 13:13:46-05

Nothing is off the table as investigators search for answers into what went so wrong in Houston Friday night.  

"So you look at it and you say first of all, crowds are too dense," said Paul Wertheimer with Crowd Management Strategies. "And you ask the question, who is observed monitoring the crowd and who is managing the crowd? And in this case it from what i can tell so far what we know. Nobody seems to have been doing either of those things."

There's new focus on a history of troubling incidents at other Live Nation concerts and other Travis Scott events.  

"I really believed that I was going to die."  

"It was going on for over two hours. It just got worse and worse, everyone's like, you just can't breathe, you just feel like there's a weighted blanket on you." 

One of the first lawsuits stemming from the Houston stampede names concert promoting giant Live Nation, along with rappers Travis Scott and Drake who performed that night.   

"It alleges that the promoter and the musicians failed to properly plan the concert. And allowed the venue to fill beyond capacity," a lawyer said. 

Density has to be kept under control. The festival seating crowd has to be open enough that emergency first responders can easily enter it to help people in need and people in the crowd have to have enough room that they can easily leave the festival seating crowd under reasonable conditions.

Live Nation is one of the largest live music promoters in the world.  

Newsy ran a search through Occupational Safety and Health Administration records and found multiple Live Nation violations in the last 20 years.  

Multiple other mass casualties at Live Nation events prompted other lawsuits. A suicide bomber killed 22 people at an Ariana Grande concert in England in 2017, a mass shooter killed 60 at a Live Nation country music festival in Las Vegas the same year and the company settled with victims of a stage collapse at a concert in Indiana in 2011.  

The concert promoter faced another lawsuit related to trampling in 2016 at a North Carolina Gwen Stefani concert. A judge removed Live Nation from the case. 

As for Travis Scott, he pleaded guilty to charges stemming from two past concerts — one in Arkansas and one in Chicago when fans rushed the stage. 

Then there's this video of the rapper encouraging a fan to jump from a balcony at a 2017 concert. 

"Then you have to say, how did they plan for this event? You plan properly, you have to know the crowd profile and the history of the artists, not now. The people who plan manage and approve it should have known those things before."

Scott posted a video on his Instagram account Saturday night saying he was "devastated."