The first lawsuit has been filed against troubled rapper Travis Scott after eight people lost their lives during his Astroworld Festival on Friday.
Kristian Paredes, 23, from Austin, Texas, was “seriously injured” during a deadly stampede at NRG Park in Houston on Nov. 5.
In the lawsuit, obtained by DailyMail.com, Paredes accused Scott of “inciting the crowd” to surge forward.
Paredes’ attorney said people were trampled at the front when Scott initiated a countdown and then emerged onstage with special guest Drake around 9 p.m. Friday. Drake was not among the scheduled performers.
“The crowd became chaotic and a stampede began leaving eight dead and dozens including Kristian Paredes severely injured,” the court papers stated.
“Many begged security guards hired by Live Nation Entertainment for help, but were ignored,” the document says.
The lawsuit said Drake and the other defendants, Live Nation and NRG Park, “knew or should have known of” Scott’s “prior conduct.”
The lawsuit claimed the injuries and deaths were due to the “negligence, carelessness and recklessness” of the “defendants, their agents, servants and employees, in the ownership, management, maintenance, operation, supervision, and the control of the subject premises.”
Paredes is asking for $1 million in damages. He is seeking a jury trial.
Hours after the tragedy, Scott’s Astroworld team released a statement claiming a man was going around injecting people with an unknown substance.
However, an ICU nurse who attended the concert said no one saw a man injecting anyone.
“It was definitely overcrowded,” ICU nurse Madeline Eskins told Rolling Stone.
Eskins said the medical staff were untrained and inexperienced. She said they didn’t know how to check for a pulse, and as a result, they performed CPR on people who had a pulse and didn’t need chest compressions.
“Some of these medical staff had little to no experience with CPR – didn’t know how to check a pulse, carotid or femoral,” Eskins wrote on Instagram.
“Compressions were being done without a pulse check so ppl who had a pulse were getting CPR, but meanwhile there was not enough people to rotate out doing compressions on individuals that were actually pulseless. The medical staff didn’t have the tools to do their jobs and despite the crowd around us trying to get someone to stop the concert they just kept going, even though Travis acknowledged that someone in the crowd needed an ambulance.”
Scott was criticized for finishing his 75-minute set while chaos swirled around him.
On Saturday, Scott shared a video on social media in which he showed no remorse and claimed to care about his fans.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V_2hOjQjss0
His words conflicted with his past behavior. The 29-year-old rapper was twice convicted of encouraging fans to jump security barriers and rush the stage at previous concerts.
In 2017, a fan was paralyzed after he was pushed off a “severely overcrowded” balcony during a concert at Terminal 5 in New York City.
Kyle Green’s attorneys say Friday’s deaths could have been prevented had Scott learned his lesson from the past.
Green, who is in a wheelchair, sued Scott, his management, a concert promoter, and a security company in 2017. His lawsuit is still pending.
Video taken by a fan at the same concert in 2017 shows Scott encouraging another fan to jump from the balcony.
“I see you, but are you gonna do it?” Scott repeatedly asked the fan. “They gonna catch you. Don’t be scared. Don’t be scared!”
Watch the video below.
