In the days since the Astroworld Festival tragedy, Travis Scott has shared two statements about it on his social media pages. Now, his lawyer is stepping forward to speak about it and he’s calling out the Houston police department. In a statement released on Wednesday, according to Billboard, Edwin F. McPherson said, “There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.” McPherson then criticized Houston Police Chief Troy Finner for comments he made in a recent interview with The New York Times.
During the interview, McPherson cites Finner’s claim that Astroworld was not shut down for fear that fans would riot. However, McPherson said, “a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.”
“It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew,” McPherson said. “This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.”
He concluded, “Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.”
