Two More People Have Died From The Astroworld Tragedy
Within 10 days of the November 5 Astroworld festival, which experienced a fatal crowd surge, two more attendees have died.
Bharti Shahani
Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old senior at Texas A&M University, suffered multiple heart attacks during the crowd surge at Travis Scott’s concert. She was placed on a ventilator with no brain activity shortly after arriving at Houston Methodist Hospital. She died Wednesday night, November 10, her family said.
Shahani attended Astroworld with her sister Namrata Shahani and her cousin Mohit Bellani. They were pulled apart during the crowd surge.
“Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other,” Bellani said. “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."
Bharti had been studying electronics systems engineering at Texas A&M University. She would have graduated this upcoming spring. Her family said she already had a summer internship lined up and that she planned on taking over their family business.
Ezra Blount
9-year-old Ezra Blount died Sunday, November 14 at Texas Children’s Hospital in Houston.
Blount suffered severe damage to his brain, kidney, and liver after being “kicked, stepped on, and trampled, and nearly crushed to death,” according to a lawsuit his family has filed against Scott and the event’s organizer, Live Nation. The Blount family is seeking at least $1 million in damages.
According to his father Treston Blount's account on the GoFundMe page set up to defray Ezra's medical expenses, Ezra was separated from his father during the crowd surge: "We attended Travis Scott’s Astro world fest I had my son on my shoulders awaiting drakes stage appearance I began to be crushed until I couldn’t breathe I passed out And I woke up and my son was gone and 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." [sic]
When Treston regained consciousness, he was unable to find his son. They finally located him at the hospital, where he had been placed in a medically induced coma.
“The Blount family tonight is grieving the incomprehensible loss of their precious young son,” said the family's attorney Ben Crump. “This should not have been the outcome of taking their son to a concert, what should have been a joyful celebration.”
Since the Astroworld tragedy, more than 20 lawsuits have been filed against Travis Scott and the organizers. Houston police and fire departments are reviewing surveillance video of the concert, as well as video clips taken by attendees and posted to social media as part of their investigation.