Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner confirmed that eight people died during the Astroworld Festival. He added that another 13 remain hospitalized. Five of them are high school aged.
Kylie Jenner responded to criticism at Instagram that Travis Scott continued to perform despite the chaos in the crowd (quote) “I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show.” (Houston Chronicle)
An expert in the insurance industry told Rolling Stone magazine (quote) “This will make it much harder to get insurance for festivals — and in particular, fairly or not, rap festivals.”
Rapper Roddy Ricch pledged his Astroworld paycheck to the impacted families that include:
The youngest victim was a first-year High School student from Houston, John Hilgert (14).
The family of Brianna Rodriguez (16) posted to Facebook (quote) “Dancing was her passion. Now she’s dancing her way to heaven’s pearly gates.”
Rudy Peña (23) was majoring in criminal justice in Laredo, Texas.
A pair of 21-year-old friends died together, Franco Patino and Jacob Jurinek, whose father said (quote) “Jacob was the sweetest kid with the biggest heart in the world.”
The brother of Axel Acosta (21) wrote at Facebook (quote) “He is in a better place. We loved him with all of our hearts.”
Danish Baig (27) died saving his fiancée from the stampede. He shoved her to safety but got caught in the crush. (People)
Investigators in the tragic shooting death of cinematographer Halyna Hutchins are focused on the assistant director and the person responsible for prop weapons called the “armorer.” The armorer on Alec Baldwin’s movie Rust was Hannah Gutierrez Reed. Her attorneys floated a wild theory of how a bullet found its way into the gun handed to Baldwin. They called it sabotage. Lawyer Jason Bowles believes a person on the movie set secretly placed live ammunition into the container of dummy rounds. […]
