Bharti Shahani, an Indian-American student, succumbed to the injuries that she sustained at Travis Scott‘s Astroworld concert last week. Shahani died on Thursday, the family’s lawyer announced at a press conference.
The death toll from the event now stands at nine.
Around 17 people were rushed to the hospital on November 5 due to a crowd surge at rapper Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival in Houston. More than 300 people were treated for minor injuries at the site of the tragedy.
Shahani had attended the concert with her friends, sister, and cousin. After her phone went unanswered multiple times, her parents rushed to the concert venue to look for her. They were directed to visit the hospitals where the injured were taken and found Shahani admitted for heart failure, her father said. She was on ventilator.
Shahani’s mother revealed that the 22-year-old software engineering student at the Texas A&M University donated her organs. She added that it was her daughter’s first music festival.
While multiple videos from the concert have been doing the rounds, attorney James Lassiter revealed that one such clip, where a woman is seen falling over a barricade while being evacuated, is Shahani’s.
Shahani’s cousin called the event an atrocity and something that was 100% avoidable. “If the producers, the venue, the organisers, and Live Nation had done their job, if they had hired properly-vetted security and trained medics, if they hadn’t grossly over-sold the event, and then let hundreds, maybe thousands of people sneak in, if they hadn’t packed us in on all three sides with barricades. They suffocated us. They did this to Bharti.”
According to The Hollywood Reporter, the event’s 56-page operations plan included protocols for various dangerous scenarios, including an active shooter, bomb or terrorist threats, and severe weather, but failed to expand on measures to deal with a crowd surge or stampede.
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Multiple lawsuits have been filed against Scott, with fellow rapper Drake, who also performed at the concert, and entertainment company Live Nation mentioned in a few.
Scott, who founded the festival, announced that he would pay for the funerals of the victims who died, and offered full refunds for the tickets, apart from an online therapy service in partnership with BetterHelp.
While the autopsies of the eight previous victims have been completed, the cause of death is still under investigation, according to the Houston Chronicle.