A crowd surge during Travis Scott’s set at the Astroworld festival in Houston’s NRG Park on Friday, 5th November resulted in the deaths of ten people and left hundreds injured.
In the weeks since the festival, Scott has sought to provide help and support for those impacted by the tragic events. He announced he’d be offering to cover funeral costs for the bereaved families and partnering with BetterHelp to offer free therapy for those impacted.
However, these measures haven’t been enough to stave off a raft of lawsuits against Scott, his special guest Drake, event promoters Live Nation Worldwide, and others. One of the lawsuits comes from Treston Blount, the father of the nine-year-old Ezra Blount, whose death on Sunday, 14th November made him the youngest person to die as a result of the Astroworld disaster.
The lawsuit was filed before Ezra’s death—when he was in a coma—and it accused Scott and Live Nation of “grossly negligent conduct”. As Rolling Stone reports, Ezra’s funeral was held on Tuesday, 23rd November and Scott’s offer to pay for the funeral, sent via his lawyers to Treston Blount’s lawyers, was rejected.
Blount’s lawyer, Bob Hilliard, had this to say in his letter of refusal: “As a parent, Treston cannot help but agonize over the terrible idea that Ezra’s last minutes were filled with terror, suffering, suffocation and worst of all surrounded by strangers, his dad unconscious underneath the uncontrolled crowd.”
