Travis Scott’s legal representative has issued a statement claiming there are inconsistencies surrounding the investigation into the tragedy at Astroworld this weekend.
Ed McPherson told TMZ, “There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.”
He continues, “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.”
McPherson says, “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 5 minutes back in 2019.”
Travis Scott’s rep finishes, “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.”
The statement comes following claims that members of the Houston Police Department were recording Travis Scott performing nearly half an hour after a mass casualty event had been declared. TMZ poses the question, ‘if they didn’t know … how would Travis?”
According to TMZ, the Fire Chief announced a “mass casualty event” at 9:38 PM. Timestamps on a photo of police recording the event display the time as 9:57 PM. 19 minutes after the chief made his declaration.
TMZ has obtained another video from Astroworld they say was filmed 25 minutes after the mass casualty declaration. Cops can be seen walking in file past the stage where Travis Scott is performing. Again, the suggestion is the cops were oblivious to the tragic events progressing around them.