Travis Scott is breathing a sigh of relief after a grand jury decided not to indict him on criminal charges related to the tragedy at his Astroworld Music Festival in 2021 during which 10 people died and hundreds were injured.
According to a report by AP, after deliberating for six hours, a Texas-based grand jury decided the “Butterfly Effect” rapper is not criminally liable for the fatal crowd surge during the concert that was held in his hometown of Houston.
His attorney, Kent Schaffer, said the decision was “a great relief” because Scott “never encouraged people to do anything that resulted in other people being hurt.”
“Today’s decision by the Harris County District Attorney confirms what we have known all along – that Travis Scott is not responsible for the AstroWorld tragedy,” Schaffer added.
Many of Scott’s fans agreed, saying the blame should rest with the venue and event organizers.
“He is blameless he is not in charge of who is let in through them gates, let alone ticket sells,” one Instagram user commented under The Shade Room’s post about the decision.
A Twitter user asked, “how tf was they gon charge him anyway? charge him with what? lol he performed. isn’t that a venue, security type thing?”
“To be fair…after the anger died down… I only blame Travis Scott for enabling the ‘rager’ behavior. But Astroworld was NOT his fault. It was Live Nation’s,” another Twitter user wrote. “You guys do NOT know how much of a mess Live Nation is as an organizer. They’re actually incompetent.”
Billboard reported the grand jury also declined to indict five other individuals including a concert promoter, security executive at Live Nation, two employees from the crowd management company and a BWG employee, which handled operations.
While this is a victory for Scott, he still faces hundreds of civil lawsuits from Astroworld victims, including the families of the youngest two – 9-year-old Ezra Blount and 14-year-old John Hilgert.
Scott has maintained he didn’t know the severity of the situation or hear the screams from the crowd to fully stop the show at the time of the stampede. He hasn’t commented publicly on the grand jury decision, but in the past said he stopped the show “a couple of times” out of concerns for fans’ well-being. A video posted to Twitter captures one of those moments.
“It’s so crazy because I’m that artist too. Anytime you can hear something like that, you want to stop the show,” Scott said during a 2022 interview with Charlamagne Tha God.
“You want to make sure fans get the proper attention they need. Anytime I could see anything like that, I did. I stopped it a couple times to just make sure everybody was OK. And I really just go off the fans’ energy as a collective, call and response. I just didn’t hear that.”
The saga is far. Robert Hilliard, the Blount family attorney, said his clients are disappointed by the grand jury’s decision, but would continue to “wait for their day in court.” Hundreds of others plan to do the same.
