Coachella organizers are under pressure to drop Travis Scott from their line-up after eight people lost their lives during his latest performance in Texas.
The beleaguered rapper is being sued for ‘inciting mayhem’ while onstage at Houston’s Astroworld on November 5, prompting a catastrophic crowd surge that killed eight and injured ‘dozens more.’
An online petition is now urging Coachella promotional firm Goldenvoice and their company CEO Paul Tollett to axe Scott, 29, from the event, which takes place in southern California on 15-17 and 22-24 April 2022.
So far close to 25,000 signatures have been added to the change.org appeal, titled ‘Remove Travis Scott as a Goldenvoice performer.’
The rapper has already been dropped from a forthcoming appearance at the Day N Vegas festival in Nevada, where he was originally slated as a headline act.
Backlash: Coachella organizers are under pressure to drop Travis Scott from their line-up after eight people lost their lives during his latest performance in Texas
Issuing a statement on November 8, three days after the Texas tragedy, organizers confirmed he will not be performing. He has since been replaced by Post Malone.
Posted on Twitter, it read: ‘Travis Scott will no longer be performing at Day N Vegas. The security and safety of all attending Day N Vegas has been and is always top priority in our festival planning.
‘We continue to work hand in hand with law enforcement, medical personnel, and public safety agencies on our protocols for the weekend.
‘Post Malone will join rappers Kendrick Lamar and Tyler, the Creator who are both due to perform over the weekend.’
Appeal: Close to 25,000 signatures have been added to a change.org petition aimed at the event organizers, titled ‘Remove Travis Scott as a Goldenvoice performer’
Stepping in: The rapper has already been dropped from a forthcoming appearance at the Day N Vegas festival in Nevada, where he was originally slated as a headline act. Post Malone (pictured) has been lined up as his replacement
Texas attorney Thomas J. Henry is representing 68 victims in a lawsuit against Scott and fellow rapper Drake, as well as the organizers Live Nation and the venue, NRG stadium, with dozens more cases expected to follow.
‘More and more injured victims are contacting my firm by the hour,’ said Henry. ‘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.’
Furious relatives of the victims are demanding that Scott be held accountable for the tragedy after he continued performing while crowds chanted ‘stop the show.’
Controversy: In footage from Astroworld Scott can be seen saying ‘hold, hold, hold’ and asking for a fan who is ‘passed out’ to be helped, but it is not clear who
Stampede: People in the audience are seen waving up to Scott – just a few feet away on stage – and begging for him to stop his performance so that the man can be treated
The rapper, who said he was ‘devastated’ about the deaths and couldn’t ‘imagine anything like this happening,’ has twice been convicted for encouraging fans to jump security barriers and rush the stage at previous concerts.
Drake, 35, called it a ‘devastating tragedy’ in an Instagram post Sunday night, saying: ‘My heart is broken for the families and friends of those who lost their lives and for anyone who is suffering.
‘I will continue to pray for all of them and will be of service in any way I can. May God be with you all.’
Tragic: Around 2pm Friday, hundreds of fans stormed the festival’s VIP entrance. Seven hours later, the surge in front of the main stage killed eight people
Nine-year-old boy who was sitting on his father’s shoulders at the Astroworld festival is in a medically induced coma after being injured in the fatal crowd surge
A nine-year-old boy who was dropped by his father as he held him above the crush of bodies at Friday’s deadly Astroworld Festival is in a medically induced coma with extensive damage to his lungs, heart and brain.
Ezra Blount was among the hundreds of concertgoers hospitalized during the stampede at the Travis Scott show.
The boy traveled from his mother’s home in Dallas to see one of his favorite artists with his dad, Treston. But the father-son outing quickly turned into a nightmare.
‘Due to his severe injuries which are swelling in the back of brain damage and trauma to nearly all organs we are certain that he was trampled and is still in induced coma,’ Treston Blount (left) wrote on a GoFundMe initiative for his son Ezra (right), which has raised nearly $7,000 in just 3 hours
Treston said he passed out while holding up Ezra so he wouldn’t be crushed. When he came to at the venue’s medical tent, his son had been admitted by himself to an area hospital as a John Doe.
‘Due to his severe injuries which are swelling in the back of brain damage and trauma to nearly all organs we are certain that he was trampled and is still in induced coma,’ Treston wrote on a GoFundMe initiative for his son, which has raised nearly $7,000 in just three hours.
Treston is a huge Travis Scott fan, with an Astroworld graphic as his Facebook cover photo and even an Astroworld tattoo on his forearm. Now, though, he and his family are looking for answers – and Travis Scott’s apologies thus far haven’t cut it.
‘I’ve seen apologies online that didn’t look so sincere from people who participated in the event. If you feel so bad, why don’t you go to the hospital to check on your fans? Why would you keep letting concerts be this way and let people get injured?’ Ezra’s grandfather, Bernon Blount, told ABC13.
‘Nobody should get injured to make a dollar – nobody should have to lose their child, their grandchild to make a dollar. safety should have been provided for their fans.’
The boy’s grandfather said that the boy was injured so severely at the event that he went into cardiac arrest.
‘If the mayor said there was 500 policemen there, I didn’t see 500 policemen,’ he said. ‘When the event said there were 700 security, I didn’t see 700 security – I saw children running through their gates trampling each other, that’s what I saw.’
As well as the dead, scores were left injured including a nine-year-old boy who remains in a coma after falling from his father’s shoulders during the scrum.
Ezra Blount suffered swelling to the brain and damage to ‘nearly all organs’ when he was trampled by the crowd, his father Treston wrote on GoFundMe.
A 22-year-old student was last night declared brain dead as the lawsuits against Scott and the festival organizers look set to soar.
Bharti Shahani, a senior at Texas A&M, went to the concert with her sister and cousin but they became separated in the chaos.
Headline act: Drake is seen on stage on Friday night, performing with Travis Scott. He then went to celebrate at his favorite sports bar – unaware, he says, that people had been killed
‘Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other,’ her cousin Mohit Bellani told ABC.
‘There were like layers of bodies on the ground, like two people thick. We were fighting to come up to the top and breathe to stay alive.’
Shahani lost oxygen for several minutes, which doctors say led to the swelling of her brain stem – the part of the organ which is connected to the spine. She remains alive with the use of a ventilator.
Outrage: Video from the night, which has drawn recent anger on social media, shows Scott singing as the limp body of one of his fans is handed up to security guards
Oblivious: Scott then continues his performance as the stricken casualty is treated at the side of the festival by police officers and members of the security team
Crush: The crowd surged towards the front at 9pm; at 9:30pm an ambulance was spotted by Scott pushing through the crowd
Harrowing footage from the event shows Scott continuing to perform as limp bodies are carried over the heads of the crowd and people beg for him to stop singing.
The show was called off 30 minutes before schedule, but half an hour after a ‘mass casualty event’ had already been declared by the fire department.
In one video, an ambulance is seen trying to make its way through the crowd, taking more than 10 minutes to reach the patient.
Headline act: Scott onstage at the Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas on November 5
Other footage shows two members of Scott’s entourage rush onto the stage to tell him something.
‘Y’all know what you came to do,’ Scott said, turning to the crowd, before the music started up again.
He then asked the tens of thousands in front of him to make ‘the ground shake.’
During a song, at around 9:30pm, Scott stopped the music and, seeing an ambulance arrive, said: ‘What the f*** is that?’
He then carried on until Live Nation stopped the concert roughly 30 minutes earlier than planned, around 10:10pm – 40 minutes after city officials said the ‘mass casualty event’ had begun.
Yet despite the ambulances, and the ‘mass casualty’ declaration, and the show being called off, the rapper went to Dave and Buster to celebrate with Drake – who had appeared on stage with him earlier that night.
The TMZ source said that Scott left the party when it was confirmed that people had lost their lives.
Scott’s presence at the party, however, adds to the accusations that the Houston-born rapper showed callous disregard in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy
He is already facing multiple lawsuits from relatives of those who lost their lives.
Scott has promised to pay funeral expenses, yet families believe that there should have been better security protocols in place in the first place.
Victims aged from 14 to 27 were crushed to death as a sizable group of the 50,000 in attendance pushed toward the stage at NRG Park in Houston, as a timer clicked down to the start of the 9pm performance.
Video circulating on Twitter shows fans begging the rapper to stop performing and chanting ‘stop the show’ as concertgoers were being knocked down and crushed by other attendees.
‘Fans were recording the concert and people doing CPR. Fans were yelling at the stage crew around us, saying stop the concert, people are dying. No one listened,’ ICU nurse and concert attendee Madeline Eskins told Rolling Stone.
‘It was definitely overcrowded. It was insane, honestly. I knew it was just way too crowded – it just got worse and worse as I got closer to Travis Scott performing it got more crowded, more crowded, more crowded.’
Investigators also plan to speak with Live Nation representatives, Scott and concertgoers.
Live Nation said in a statement Monday that full refunds would be offered to all attendees.