The death toll in the Astroworld tragedy has risen to 9 after the passing of 22-year-old student Bharti Shahani, who succumbed to her injuries after almost a week in hospital. Her family is demanding justice for her death.
A nine-year-old boy remains in a medically induced coma following his injuries.
Calls have ramped up for Travis Scott to be boycotted in the wake of the tragedy, with online campaigners pushing to block the rapper’s music on Spotify and stop him performing at Coachella festival next year.
Mr Scott’s lawyer has criticised what he called “finger-pointing” and “inconsistent messaging” by Houston police and officials in the wake of the deadly tragedy at Astroworld, instead urging them to get on with investigating Friday’s incident so that repeats in future can be avoided.
Meanwhile, at least 58 lawsuits have been filed in Harris County District Court in connection with the Astroworld disaster, as of Wednesday.
It comes after Houston’s police chief told a news conference that officials didn’t have the power to stop Scott’s performance as the disaster unfolded and that the “ultimate authority to end the show is with the production and the entertainer”.
TikTok was also struggling to control viral conspiracy theories falsely claiming that the deaths were part of a Satanic ritual.
Two criminal investigations and more than 30 lawsuits are now probing what went wrong at the Astroworld festival in Houston, Texas on Friday night, when a crowd surge killed at least people and injured hundreds more.
Astroworld founder and headliner Travis Scott, who was performing when the crush happened, has said he is “devastated”.
