About 50,000 people attended Friday’s Astroworld music festival at NRG Park organized by rapper Travis Scott when the crowd surged towards the stage causing a crush that led to the deaths of eight people and many injured. A nine-year-old is among those injured.
Ezra Blount went to the concert on Friday with his father, Treston Blount. Ezra was on his father’s shoulders at a point during the concert so that he could stay out of and above the crowd, ABC13 reported. However, when the crowd surge began, his father passed out and fell. Ezra also fell and was trampled.
“The crowd just started going crazy and Treston goes, ‘I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,’” Ezra’s aunt, Taylor Blount, said in an interview on NBC’s “TODAY” show.
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Ezra was taken to a hospital, separated from his father. His relatives later found him alone at the hospital in a coma, suffering from major organ damage. He also has severe brain swelling, according to his family members who are praying he recovers soon.
They have also filed a lawsuit against the event organizers and performers at the concert. The lawsuit, filed by civil rights attorney Ben Crump, alleges “negligence regarding crowd control, medical attention and event staffing,” ABC News reported.
“He’s a small, innocent child,” Ezra’s grandfather Bernon Blount told KTRK. “He didn’t deserve it. He didn’t deserve it at all. He’s just coming into town to see one of his favorite artists and to be trampled like that and really left the hospital with no one knowing where he was. That’s heartbreaking.”
A GoFundMe has been set up to help Ezra’s family with expenses.
A 14-year-old child was among those who died after the tragedy. A 16-year old was also killed while the other victims included two 21-year-olds, two 23-year-olds and a 27-year-old, according to the city’s mayor Sylvester Turner. The age of one other victim is not known. Around 11 people were taken to the hospital and nearly 300 were treated for injuries.
“This is now a criminal investigation that’s going to involve our homicide division as well as narcotics, and we’re going to get down to the bottom of it,” Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference Saturday, according to The Washington Post.
Mayor Turner said the investigation may go on for quite some time to determine what exactly happened. He said officials were looking at where “missteps may have occurred” at the concert and will speak with witnesses, representatives of the concert and Scott as well.
Scott posted videos to his Instagram story Saturday, saying he is working with officials to understand what happened. He also vowed to help the families of the victims. “My fans really mean the world to me,” he said. “I am honestly just devastated.”
“Any time I could make out anything that was going on, I stopped the show and helped them get the help they need,” he added. “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation.”
Live Nation Entertainment, which organized the concert, said after the tragedy that it will send the video of the concert, which was published by Apple Music, to police officials. “That’s going to help us,” Finner said.
Finner added that the police are investigating reports that somebody in the audience had been injecting people with drugs. A security guard passed out after it appeared that he was injected in the neck with a needle while trying to restrain a concertgoer. Finner said the guard was revived using the drug Narcan, which is mostly used for overdoses on opioids.
Scott, whose real name is Jacques Webster, pleaded guilty to a public disorder charge in 2018 after he was accused of urging people to rush the stage at a concert in Arkansas. He also reportedly paid almost $7,000 to two people who said they were injured at the event.
