Off-course! Travis Scott is seen hanging with Michael Jordan, Mark Wahlberg and for round of golf as rapper faces dozens of lawsuits seeking BILLIONS over Astroworld concert disaster that killed 10
Travis Scott got in some tee time on a Southern California golf course, palling around with Michael Jordan and Mark Wahlberg as he tried to get his mind off the dozens of lawsuits he faces in connection with the deadly Astroworld concert in Houston that killed 10.
The rapper, who could be on the hook for billions of dollars in damages, flew to Southern California to spend the Thanksgiving holiday with his family, including girlfriend Kylie Jenner.
Social media photos posted on Tuesday showed Scott hanging out with Corey Gamble, who is Kris Jenner's boyfriend, and actor Said Taghmaoui.
Taghmaoui was seen posing for photographs with both Scott and Jordan.
The rapper's legal problems continued to mount this week as the family of two close friends from suburban Chicago who were killed at the Astroworld concert in Houston this month filed wrongful death lawsuits against him, the Live Nation entertainment company and others.
The lawsuits filed by the Naperville families of Jacob 'Jake' Jurinek, 20, and Franco Patino, 21, are part of a flood of dozens of suits against Scott and the companies behind the November 5 event in which 10 people were killed and hundreds were injured when a crowd surge pushed concert-goers forward, crushing and trampling many of them.
Travis Scott (seen right with actor Said Taghmaoui) got in tee time on a Southern California golf course, palling around with Michael Jordan and Mark Wahlberg as he tried to get his mind off the dozens of lawsuits he faces in connection with the deadly Astroworld concert in Houston
Scott is seen far right at a table near the golf course. Mark Wahlberg is seen far left speaking with Corey Gamble, who is dating Kris Jenner, the mother of Scott's girlfriend Kylie Jenner
Taghmaoui is seen left posing with Jordan during the outing earlier this week
As with many of the other lawsuits, this one puts the blame on the companies and Scott, an organizer of the concert who was on stage when the deadly scene unfolded, for failing to take even the most basic safety precautions.
'Defendants egregiously failed in their duty to protect the health, safety, and lives of those in attendance at the concert, including but not limited to the failure to provide adequate security personnel to implement crowd control measures, proper barricades, and the failure to provide a sufficient amount of emergency medical support,' the suits contends.
Patino and Jurinek were both college students, Patino at the University of Dayton in Ohio and Jurinek at Southern Illinois University-Carbondale.
They had been football teammates at Neuqua Valley High School in Naperville.
Like the loved ones of the other victims, a partner in the Chicago law firm Corboy & Demetrio, which filed the lawsuits this week in Harris County Courts in Houston, said the families are trying to make sense of something that makes no sense.
'A healthy, strong 20- or 21-year-old child goes off to a concert thinking he's going to have some fun, and they're going to be celebrating, in this case, Jake's 21st birthday,' Corboy said, according to the Naperville Sun.
'Nobody expects to go to something as happy and joyous as concert where they end up dying. Nobody anticipates when they pay these high prices for these concert tickets that they have to worry about things like that.'
The rapper's legal problems continued to mount this week as the family of two close friends from suburban Chicago - Jacob 'Jake' Jurinek, 20, and Franco Patino, 21, - who were killed at the Astroworld concert in Houston this month filed wrongful death lawsuits against him, the Live Nation entertainment company and others. Patino (left) and Jurinek were best friends and attended the concert to celebrate Jurinek's birthday
Patino (left) and Jurinek grew up in the same Illinois town and were best friends
Meanwhile, an investigation revealed that at least seven of the 10 victims killed in the Astroworld festival crowd surge were clustered in the same small area, which was enclosed on three sides by metal barriers.
A Washington Post investigation gathered dozens of videos, photos and witness testimony to piece together a timeline of exactly where the victims were during the deadly crowd surge at the Houston festival.
The surge at the sold-out event of 50,000 people on November 5 left hundreds injured and ten dead, including a nine-year-old boy.
The dead, whose ages ranged from nine to 27, include Rodolfo 'Rudy' Pena, 23; Jacob Jurinek, 20; Franco Patino, 21; Brianna Rodriguez, 16; Danish Baig, 27; Axel Acosta, 21; John Hilgert, 14; Madison Dubiski, 23, Baharti Shahani, 22, and nine-year-old Ezra Blount.
Concertgoers have said the packed crowd was growing dangerous hours before Scott appeared on stage at 9pm, and described people collapsing during the rapper's performance.
Scott's attorneys have said he did not know about the deaths and injuries until after the show.
The Post's investigation showed that seven of the deceased were relatively close to each other in the south quadrant audience area. The general audience was divided into quadrants to the north, south, east and west.
At least seven of the 10 dead Astroworld victims were clustered in the same small area enclosed on three sides by metal barriers
Massive crowd is shown pushing and shoving, with some being lifted over the barricades to safety, as Travis Scott performs at the Astroworld Festival on Nov. 5, 2021.
Concertgoers have described the packed crowd growing dangerous hours before Scott appeared on stage at 9pm, and seeing people collapse while the rapper performed
A crowd surge that started just before headliner Travis Scott (pictured) took the stage left 10 people dead, including a 9-year-old boy, and hundreds injured
Seven of the victims - Pena, Jurinek, Patino, Baig, Acosta, Dubiski, and Ezra - were near the center of the south quadrant.
The tragedy was set in motion when the audience by the main stage began to grow around 8:30 pm, after a concert by singer SZA ended at the adjacent secondary stage.
Fans who had just finished watching her made their way toward the already packed main stage area. Most headed straight toward the south quadrant, the Post reported.
That stream of people increased crowd pressure and left people in the area caught in a current of people moving toward the stage.
Mohammad Amleh told the Post that he and a friend got caught in the rush, and were pushed toward the south quadrant.
'Once the crowd was moving, you were moving with it, there was no, you were at the mercy of the crowd pretty much,' he said. 'There was no way you would have been able to move around or keep yourself stable.'
Three crowd experts told the Post that the influx of people into the south quadrant, plus the rigid dividers, would have compressed the crowd and made it very difficult for people in the section to exit.
Other than the rushing fans, the expert said the layout of the barriers was to blame because concert organizers could not cut people off from surging toward the stage.
'In general, that's not a safe design because you can't regulate the number of people who are in a high-pressure area,' Keith Still, a visiting professor at the University of Suffolk who specializes in crowd safety and crowd risk analysis, told the Post.
One Astroworld attendee who was in the south quadrant said that as soon as Scott took the stage at 9pm the crowd erupted.
'As soon a Travis reaches the stage there's just this whole different shift into the crowd,' Jacob Amaya told the Post. 'I was like, man, this is like, this is not safe. Like, I started to notice, I look in front of me, I see people crying. I look in the side of me, I see my friends, they're yelling for help, they're saying 'we gotta get out.'
Seven of the victims-Rodolfo 'Rudy' Pena, Jacob Jurinek, Franco Patino, Danish Baig, Axel Acosta, Madison Dubiski, and Ezra Blount- were located near the center of the south quadrant
A close up shot of the crowd at Astroworld where ten people died following a deadly crowd surge
Chaos at the concert in Houston ensued as thousands of people surged toward the stage and hundreds were injured in the crush
Experts told the Post that the crowd collapse occurred at 9:12 pm, almost immediately after Scott took the stage.
In video obtained by the Post, three concertgoers who died were unconscious in a pile of other fallen fans only 16 minutes into Scott's show.
The Post also obtained footage showing Ezra yards away from Dubiski.
Footage from the area adjacent to where Ezra was, captured fans shouting, 'She can't breathe!' repeatedly as well as people begging for help.
People in the south quadrant also were seen trying to hop over the security fence, but getting pinned up against it, leaving them trapped and unable to escape.
While the south quadrant was in total chaos, a concertgoer said people in the west quadrant were completely unaware of the tragedy unfolding nearby.
By 9:18pm, a Houston firefighter outside the venue who was monitoring radio communication channels noted a 'report of individual with crush injury/breathing difficulty,'
By 9:30pm another entry noted: 'HPD (Houston Police Department) reports multiple people trampled, passed out at front of stage,'
Minutes later at 9:38 pm the Fire Chief called the calamity a 'mass casualty event' but the show went on for 40 more minutes until 10:11 pm
Police still are trying to determine whether the deaths occurred only because of the surge or if other factors, such as accidental fatal overdoses, came into play, a source close to the investigation told The Wall Street Journal.
There were 300 people injured at the event, including 11 who went into cardiac arrest and dozens more who were knocked unconscious in the surge.
Scott released a statement in the aftermath of the tragedy, saying he was 'absolutely devastated' by the loss of life.
The Houston native went on: 'My prayers go out to the families and all those impacted by what happened at the Astroworld Festival.
'Houston PD has my total support as they continue to look into the tragic loss of life.
'I am committed to working together with the Houston community to heal and support the families in need.'
He has since offered to pay the cost of the victims' funerals and has set up a counseling service for fans affected by the tragedy.
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