Almost two years after the tragic incident at the 2021 Astroworld Festival where 10 people were crushed to death, no charges have been filed. The incident raised safety concerns, but determining who exactly was to blame for the deaths has proven challenging.
University of Houston Law Center’s Criminal Law Professor Sandra Guerra Thompson stated that it’s difficult to establish clear evidence indicating the failure of anyone in charge, whose responsibility was ensuring safety, to act.
Houston police released a nearly 1,300-page report on the investigation into the tragedy. The report mentioned that a contract worker warned an event organizer about the potential for fatalities due to the crowd crush, shortly before rapper Travis Scott went onstage.
Despite no charges being filed, more than 500 lawsuits have been submitted over the fatalities and injuries at the concert. These suits have targeted concert promoter Live Nation and Scott, among others. Some of these have already been settled.
The victims ranged in age from 9 to 27, and all died from compression asphyxia, according to medical examiners. A Texas grand jury declined to indict six people in the case, including Scott, due to limitations on potential charges imposed by the circumstances of the deaths.
Prosecutors face challenges due to the large number of people involved in the event, its scale, and the high threshold for proving criminal negligence or recklessness.
Scott has denied responsibility for the tragedy, stating he was unaware of the deaths until after the show. He has since launched Project HEAL, a $5 million initiative addressing safety challenges for festivals and large-scale events.
In response to the tragedy, Texas Governor Greg Abbott formed a task force to study concert safety and recommend crowd control and security measures for mass gatherings. The task force’s findings have pointed to inconsistencies in issuing permits for such events and proposed creating a command center authorized to pause or cancel shows due to safety concerns.