Families Of Two Naperville Men Killed At Astroworld Festival File Wrongful Death Lawsuits Against Travis Scott, Concert Organizers
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The families of two young men from Naperville who were killed in the stampede at the Astroworld festival in Houston earlier this month have filed wrongful death lawsuits against rapper Travis Scott and event organizers, accusing them of not doing enough to prevent the deadly chaos.
Jake Jurinek and Franco Patino, both 21, were among the 10 people killed as a result of an intense crowd surge during Scott's performance at the festival on Nov. 5.
Patino and Jurinek met in grade school in Naperville, and both graduated from Neuqua Valley High School; described by friends and educators alike as "big characters" in a life lived with strong friendships.
Patino was a senior at the University of Dayton, where he majored in mechanical engineering technology and minored in human movement biomechanics.
Jurinek was a junior at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, studying advertising and journalism.
"Parents shouldn't have to be worried that their children will be kicked, stepped on, trampled, and crushed to death at a concert," attorney Philip Corboy Jr. said in a statement.
The lawsuits filed by the Patino and Jurinek families accuse Scott, festival organizers, the owners and operators of NRG Park, and several others of being fully aware of the chaos that unfolded during Scott's concert, but not stopping it until more than 40 minutes after city officials declared it a mass casualty event.
Investigators say it could take months to figure out what went wrong. An estimated 50,000 people were in attendance for the concert.
The crowd began to push and move towards the stage around 9 p.m. on the night of the concert, when Travis Scott was performing.
Houston fire chief Samuel Peña said that concertgoers started to "compress" toward the stage during Scott's performance, which "caused some panic, and it started causing some injuries."
Scott has been blamed for not stopping his performance, and cell phone video from the concert showed attendees telling security "there's someone dead in there" and the crowd yelling "stop the show" while he performed.
CBS News also has learned organizers did not have a contingency plan in place for surging crowds, despite three people being trampled and hospitalized at the festival in 2019.
It happens that Scott has a long history with crowd control and violence. As CBS 2's Marie Saavedra reported earlier this month, that history includes a stop at Grant Park for Lollapalooza six years ago that ended with the rapper in handcuffs.
It is part of a pattern that's proved incredibly dangerous, and now deadly.
Travis Scott – who was born Jacques Webster and back then stylized his name as "Travi$" - was barely into his set at Lollapalooza in 2015 when he urged the crowd to jump the barricades into the security pit.
And they did.
The rapper was arrested for disorderly conduct, and later pleaded guilty. But no fans were hurt that night - unlike at Astroworld.
"I could never imagine anything like this just happening," Scott said in part on an Instagram video apologizing for what happened in Houston.
But his track record tells a different story, which continued long after the Lollapalooza incident in 2015.
In April 2017, Scott encouraged a fan at a show at Terminal 5 in New York City to jump from a balcony into the crowd. A month later, he was arrested after a show in Arkansas suspicion of inciting a riot.
Even Scott's 2019 Nexflix Documentary showed the perils of attending his shows.
Scott is already facing a dozens of lawsuits from fans who were hurt in Houston, saying he didn't do enough to prevent the chaos.
Scott is vowing to cover funeral expenses for the ten people killed, including Jurinek and Patino.