Astroworld Victim Bharti Shahani Dies, Bringing Death Toll to 9

Travis Scott performs at Day 1 of the Astroworld Music Festival at NRG Park in Houston on Nov. 5, 2021. (Amy Harris/Invision/AP)

A 22-year-old woman who attended Houston’s Astroworld Festival in Houston over the past weekend is the ninth person to die due to the incident, an attorney for her family and her family confirmed.

James Lassiter, the lawyer, confirmed to media outlets that Bharti Shahani died on Wednesday night. She was a student at Texas A&M University, attending the concert with her younger sister and cousin, family members have said.

“She was like an angel for us,” Bharti’s father Sunny said, according to KHOU.

“Please make sure that she gets justice,” he told ABC. “I don’t want somebody else’s daughter to go like this. I kept hearing the news and all that, but for the last six days, I’ve not slept.”

For days, Shahani had been on a ventilator after attending the event headlined by rapper Travis Scott.

“There have been a lot of questions, and I think it’s common knowledge, but there was a video going around that most people have seen of a young lady falling from a gurney as they were trying to get her out there ... evacuate her. That was Bharti Shahani,” her attorney said.

Her sister, Mohit Bellani, described the concert.

“We were drowning. We were drowning. We were dying. We were screaming for help, screaming for the concert to stop, crying, yelling. No one listened. No one cared,” Bellani said, according to KBTX.

Authorities previously said that the incident was triggered when concertgoers rushed the stage. Some attendees recalled being pushed into one another from all sides or pushed down to the floor and trampled by others.

Some concert attendees recalled being pushed into one another from all sides, pushed down to the floor, and trampled or crushed by other concertgoers. A 9-year-old was reportedly injured during the event.

Scott was only minutes into his headlining show at the Astroworld music festival when at least one Houston officer radioed over a police channel that the main stage had been compromised by a massive crowd surge.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner said Wednesday that police told organizers to shut down the performance while fans in the crowd were being administered CPR. Authorities gave word around 10:03 p.m. that the concert was in the process of shutting down, but witnesses say Scott and Drake, the superstar rapper who came on toward the end of Scott’s set as a special guest, kept performing.

The Houston Police Department and the FBI are currently investigating the incident.

The Associated Press contributed to this report.