News

​Another Astroworld attendee has died after six days in ICU

The death toll from the festival has now risen to nine

The death toll following Travis Scott’s Astroworld Festival has risen to nine after another victim has passed away.

Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old student, died after six days in ICU following injuries that she sustained during Friday’s event.

On Friday, November 5, a crowd surge during Travis Scott’s headline performance caused the death of eight people and injured others. Both Scott and Live Nation are now facing legal action from fans as a result.

Yesterday, November 11, Bharti’s death was confirmed during a press conference. Her mother, Karishma Shahani, paid an emotional tribute to her daughter.

“What happened to my blessing now. I want my baby back. I won’t be able to live without her. It’s impossible,” she said in tears.

“The first thing she ever asked for in her life was ‘Mama, can I go to this concert?’,” she said of her daughter. “Why didn’t I say no to her? Why? Because it was the first thing she asked me for herself.”

Bharti’s mother said that she never “asked for anything”, and was “always giving”, adding: “This wasn’t a concert because my baby didn’t come back.”

The Shahani family’s lawyer, James Lassiter, is now working with the family to get justice, calling the festival “a senseless, gross disregard for human life”. He claimed, “the way that this festival was put on was a recipe for disaster that these people cooked up from the configuration.”

Lassiter also confirmed that a video of a girl being dropped from a stretcher that circulated following Astroworld Festival was in fact Bharti.

The 22-year-old appeared to not have been strapped to the gurney and was dropped, unconscious, from the stretcher where she landed on her head. Bharti suffered a lack of oxygen to the brain and multiple heart attacks during the crowd crush.

She was pronounced brain dead on Wednesday, November 10, and passed away yesterday, November 11. Her father, Sunny Shahani, said at the conference: “Please make sure she gets justice and I don’t want somebody else’s daughter to go like this. It was the wrong day and wrong time for her.”

Gemma Ross is Mixmag's Digital Intern, follow her on Twitter