The father of the 9-year-old boy who was “trampled and catastrophically injured” at the Astroworld Festival in Houston has filed a negligence lawsuit against concert promoter Live Nation and Travis Scott.
Ezra Blount was on his dad Treston Blount’s shoulders at the Friday night festival when the two became trapped in the deadly crowd surge that started soon after Travis Scott took the stage at 9 p.m., his grandparents confirm.
“He kept screaming, ‘I can’t breathe.’ But everyone was pushing. It was so tight with no exits. His dad couldn’t breathe at all and passed out. We don’t really know what happened to Ezra after that,” grandmother Tericia Blount tells Rolling Stone. The family later found Ezra at a nearby hospital listed as a John Doe, and his father raced to his side, she says.
“During the concert, (Ezra), a 9-year-old minor child, was suddenly forced to watch in terror as several concertgoers were injured and killed as a result of the crowd surge. He himself was kicked, stepped on, and trampled, and nearly crushed to death,” the new lawsuit obtained by Rolling Stone claims. “He is currently in an induced coma on life support and has severe liver, kidney and brain damage. To his young, growing body, these injuries will have life-long effects, impairing his quality of life and ability to grow and thrive.”
The lawsuit is seeking a least $1 million in damages.
“This young child and his family will face life-altering trauma from this day forward, a reality that nobody expects when they buy concert tickets. Concerts and music festivals such as this are meant to be a safe place for people of all ages to enjoy music in a controlled environment. None of that was true about the Astroworld Festival,” Crump said in a statement Tuesday. “This little boy is currently fighting for his life, and his parents will never know the same child they entered Astroworld with.”
The new lawsuit – which also names promoter ScoreMore Management, its boss Sascha Stone Guttfreund and Scott’s label Cactus Jack Records as defendants – alleges the concert’s organizers failed to stop Scott’s performance for at least 40 minutes after city officials declared the scene a “mass casualty event.”
From Rolling Stone US
