Rapper Travis Scott only got to fully understand what had happened at Astroworld the next morning, his lawyer says.
The 30-year-old musician was performing on stage at his festival in Houston, Texas, last week when a crowd surge caused the death of nine people and the injury of more than 300 others.
And his attorney, Edwin F. McPherson, has now said the rapper “truly did not know what was going on” in the crowd until the following day – although he did stop his performance to check on fans multiple times.
Edwin said during an appearance on ‘Good Morning America’: “Obviously was a systemic breakdown that we need to get to the bottom of before we start pointing fingers at anyone.
“But clearly the important thing is that [the news] never got to Travis, it never got to Travis’ crew. He’s up there trying to perform; he does not have any ability to know what’s going on down below, certainly on a mass level.
“Travis didn’t really understand the full effect of everything until the next morning. Truly he did not know what was going on.
“Understand that when he’s up on the stage and he has flashpots going off around him and he has an ear monitor that has music blasting through it and his own voice, he can’t hear anything, he can’t see anything.”
The news comes after Edwin previously accused law enforcement of making “inconsistent messages” about the tragedy.
He said earlier this week: “[They] have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.”
He added: “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.”
The chief said local officials didn’t have the power to end the performance, insisting the “ultimate authority to end the show is with the production and the entertainer” – although he later said he didn’t want to “point fingers” until the on-going investigation had concluded.
And Travis’ lawyer added: “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 five 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.”
Travis will play for the funerals of those who died, while he and his Cactus Jack Foundation are also teaming up with BetterHelp, an online portal providing mental health support, to offer free one-on-one virtual therapy sessions for anyone affected by the tragedy.
