Travis Scott's Attorney Says 'Investigations Should Start Proceeding Over Finger-Pointing' Following Astroworld Festival Tragedy
Travis Scott's attorney has spoken out following the crowd surge at Astroworld Festival earlier this month that claimed eight lives and left hundreds of attendees injured.
Edwin F. McPherson addressed what he called "finger-pointing" by Houston officials, "who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements" in a statement to PEOPLE.
"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,'" the attorney said. "Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis."
Finner reportedly said during a press conference on Wednesday, November 10, that he did not want to "point fingers" until the investigation was complete. However, he claimed that the ultimate authority to end the show was with the production team and the entertainer, and not with local officials.
"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," McPherson told PEOPLE. "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."
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"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," he added.
In the aftermath of the tragedy, the 30-year-old rapper released a statement saying he was "absolutely devastated" by what transpired. He has since been named in several lawsuits.
An insider previously told PEOPLE that the "goosebumps" singer could not hear anything beyond his inner-ear producers and could not see what was going on because lights were shining in his eyes. "He thought someone had just passed out, which happens during concerts," an insider said.
