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Travis Scott SBSR Lisbon 20 07 18 Chris Almeida

A third family has settled the lawsuit filed against Travis Scott after Astroworld tragedy

04 August 2023, 09:00 | Written by Tyler Damara Kelly

Rolling Stone reports that the family of John Hilgert withdrew their suit against Travis Scott, Live Nation, and other festival organisers in February.

The family of 14-year-old Hilgert is the third party to settle a lawsuit brought over the crowd crush at NRG Park on 6 November 2021, which resulted in ten deaths and thousands of injuries. The families of Axel Acosta and Brianna Rodriguez, two other Astroworld attendees who died, previously settled their own suits filed after the event.

Beyond the settlements, just over a month ago, a grand jury determined that no one involved with the festival – including Scott and several festival and security executives – would face criminal charges over the disaster.

Last Friday, the Houston Police Department released an extensive, 1,300-page investigation into the tragedy. The report detailed a scene in which fans, security personnel, and camera operators tried to relay the danger early in the show as the crowd constricted and festivalgoers were crushed — but the concert went on for an hour before finally concluding. In the report, Scott recalled being told through his in-ears, “you got to wrap it up, it’s getting kinda hectic out there,” but stated that he was not made aware of the gravity of the situation until later.

The report was released on the same day Scott’s latest album, Utopia, dropped. Scott’s attorney suggested the police released the report the same day as his album drop to impact sales – an assertion that seemed to irk Bob Hilliard, who represents the family of nine-year-old victim Ezra Blount.

“For an artist making his living with music, these are stunningly tone-deaf comments about this preventable tragedy that took so many lives and injured so many,” Hilliard said. A representative for Scott pushed back on Hilliards’s statements, telling the publication that “to use that report to try to blame Travis for the Astroworld tragedy doesn’t just defy logic, but can be seen as nothing but a cynical attempt to exploit the victims and gaslight the public.”

Scott recently announced a concert at Rome's Circus Maximus park in support of his latest album Utopia, after a planned show at the Pyramids of Giza was cancelled over safety concerns.

The show’s organisers and Scott still face civil suits from thousands of attendees, amounting to hundreds of millions of dollars in potential damages.

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