Florida lawsuit accuses Travis Scott of negligence in concert death

Media playback is not supported on this device Teen dies at rapper Travis Scott’s concert

Rapper Travis Scott has been hit with a lawsuit for allegedly performing at a concert where a teenager died of a suspected drug overdose.

Veronica Brown, 14, died after reportedly taking Xanax and a morphine pill in the hours before she died at Scott’s concert at the Astroworld theme park in Pensacola, Florida, in March 2017.

Brown’s family said they have been unable to recover lost income and “their daughter’s young, promising life was tragically taken” as a result of the performance.

The lawsuit said the concert promoter “failed to take basic precautions” and failed to test samples from Scott’s tour bus.

Under Florida law, public events are insured, but there are no comparable legislation in other states.

Documents submitted by lawyers in the case, which is set to go to trial in 2019, state that the tour was insured against liability relating to drugs and alcohol and that organisers did not tell Scott of the existing rules.

The documents also said that five samples of Scott’s tour bus were tested in the days after the concert and did not test positive for drug or alcohol poisoning.

Four of the samples were tested by a laboratory that was paid for by the organising company. Two positive tests were allegedly attributed to “historical” issues.

What did the family say?

The family’s attorney, Katheryn Keys, told local news channel Bay News 9: “This performance is really, in its true essence, essentially child’s play.

“I don’t think someone else in the world is going to have to sit there and watch a child die after taking a drug in front of the stage, and this is essentially a death trap. This is a place people want to come and have fun, but we lost Veronica in the process.”

Keys added that more need to be done to police drug abuse at concerts and that further action will be taken in an attempt to prove that Scott was “criminally negligent”.

Concert promoter Live Nation said that it “did not perform any such actions nor performance” as stated in the suit.

It said that on the day of the show, Brown was provided with a “medically appropriate meal” by her mother before boarding the bus to go to the event.

If a lawsuit succeeds, it could see Scott fined and ordered to pay damages to Brown’s family, but Keys insisted that the lawsuit will go ahead.

“That will be part of the discovery process… if there are questions that need to be answered, the judge will allow us to ask them,” she said.

Live Nation stated in a statement that it had learned of the lawsuit on Wednesday and said it would “review the matter closely”.

Police in Florida last year concluded that Scott, real name Jacques Webster, played no part in Brown’s death, however, she had a known history of drug abuse.

Four other teenagers – all 18 – were charged in connection with Brown’s death. All pleaded guilty to misdemeanor drug possession charges.

BBC

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