A grand jury in Texas has decided not to charge rapper Travis Scott after 10 people suffocated to death in the crowd at his Astroworld Festival in Houston, Texas, in 2021.
The Houston grand jury met on Thursday, June 29, to consider criminal charges for Scott and several others involved in the tragedy but ultimately decided to return a "no bill," Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg said in a press conference.
When a grand jury returns a "no bill" decision, it means they've decided there's not enough evidence of guilt to support a criminal charge.
In a statement to NBC News, Scott's attorney Kent Schaffer wrote that the grand jury's decision "confirms what we have known all along."
"Travis Scott is not responsible for the AstroWorld tragedy," Schaffer said. "This is consistent with investigative reporting by numerous media outlets and federal and state government reports that have squarely placed the onus for event safety crises on organizers, operators and contractors — not performers."
Schaffer added that Scott was "inaccurately and wrongly singled out, despite stopping the show three separate times and being unaware of the events as they were unfolding."
Schaffer concluded that he hopes for future "government efforts" to help stop "future heartbreaking tragedies like AstroWorld from ever occurring again."
In her press conference, Ogg said that the prosecutors had worked with local police for 19 months to review thousands of hours of footage and testimony from the event to put together the presentation for the grand jury.
After Ogg's announcement, two detectives from the Houston Police Department walked press through some of their findings and showed footage of the crowd the night of the incident.
They highlighted how all of the deaths had happened in one area of the concert's general admission section in small pockets that would have been difficult to see from the stage or the walkways where security and EMS were stationed.
"Just to be clear, this was not a crowd stampede. This was not a stage rush. This was not a crowd surge. This was a slow compaction or constriction," Detective Michael Barrows said, adding that the deaths had happened in small, isolated "crowd pockets."
"A crowd pocket is an area where the crowd is succumb to pressure leading to an isolated collapses within the crowd," he said. "(Crowd pockets) are, in fact, areas where crowds have collapsed and on each other and also know that even mere feet away that concertgoers were not able to distinguish what was happening at their feet."
According to NBC News, 10 people ranging in age from 9 to 27 died in the incident, which happened at NRG Park in November 2021.
Fire Chief Samuel Peña told a news conference at the time that people started panicking once others "began to compress toward the front of the stage."
"That caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries. People began to fall out, become unconscious, and it created additional panic," he said.
"It was scary, like, genuinely," one attendee, Alleighya Odom, told NBC News at the time.
Odom noted that the packed crowd felt like a "force on my back," and they saw "people on the ground" looking "scared, eyes wild, like, 'Please help me.'"
In response to the tragedy, which injured thousands, Scott took to Twitter to say that he was "absolutely devastated by what took place."
“My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at Astroworld Festival," he said.
“I am committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need,” Scott added. “Thank you to Houston PD, Fire Department and NRG Park for their immediate response and support. Love You All.”
In the months following the incident, a spokesperson for Scott — who hosted the festival — told NBC News that the rapper was unfairly blamed for the tragedy.
“It’s very clear that the tide is turning as the authorities and public conversation has been focused on concert operators and security contractors rather than performers,” the spokesperson said in a statement at the time, adding “all signs point to a strong comeback” for Scott.
