“How did this happen? Where were the missteps? Where were the failures? Where were the gaps? We owe it to the family members, all of those who attended and quite frankly the city as a whole, to the first responders, all of them, how did this happen?” “How did this happen? That is a question that remains on all of our minds,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said earlier Wednesday. Officials have not disclosed details about the fans who have been hospitalized since Friday, but the family of a 9-year-old boy who attended the concert with his father has said the child was in a medically induced coma after sustaining injuries to his heart, lungs and brain. Todd Mensing, another attorney representing Scott, told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday that the artist only found out about injuries and deaths in the crowd after the show.Īt least two concertgoers remained in critical condition Wednesday. He repeatedly cautioned that the investigation was still in the early stages and said he would not “cast blame” on any organization. Speaking to reporters for just the second time since the tragedy, Finner was defensive at times and criticized what he described as rumors and speculation surrounding what happened.Ībout 530 Houston police officers worked the festival, more than twice as many as when the festival was last held in 2019, according to Finner. We had a very respectful, few minute conversation on my concerns.” “But I’m the kind of chief that I meet with people whenever I can, and that includes him. “I had no reason to believe that it wasn’t going to be safe,” Finner said. He said he has only ever spoken with Scott twice. McPherson said in a statement.įinner also forcefully defended his department’s ability to handle the criminal investigation on its own, rejected calls for an outside probe and said he did not have a close relationship with Scott, who is from Houston and founded the festival.įinner said he expressed safety concerns to Scott before the Friday night show but did not go into detail. “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,” attorney Edwin F. Scott’s attorneys on Wednesday pointed to an operational plan for the event that states only the festival director and executive producers have the authority to stop the show, “neither of which is part of Travis’s crew.” “We had those discussions with the promoters.” But it’s always in the plan, it’s always a discussion of how that would happen,” he said. “When you say authority and ability to end the show, we don’t hold the plug. But he repeatedly declined to provide timelines, making it unclear at what point that order came in Scott’s roughly hourlong set, and how much longer the show lasted after the directive was given.
Finner said police told organizers to shut down the performance when fans in the crowd were administered CPR. He described staffing records handed over by organizers as “just not good” but emphasized that he was not placing any blame.īut key questions are still unknown five days after the tragedy, which left hundreds of other concertgoers injured, including at least two who were still in critical condition. It was up to Live Nation Entertainment, the show’s promoter, to secure two mosh pits in front of the stage Friday night at the sold-out festival of 50,000 people, Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said at a news conference. HOUSTON (AP) - Organizers of the Astroworld music festival have not provided investigators with clear records about private security personnel working the grounds when a massive crowd surge during headliner Travis Scott’s set led to at least eight deaths, Houston’s police chief said Wednesday. Security staffing at Travis Scott show unclear, chief says – The Denver Post