22-year-old Bharti Shahani student of Texas A&M University has been declared brain dead after she injured herself during Travis Scott’s performance in the Astroworld Festival crowd surge last weekend where at least 8 people had been killed.
The Astroworld Festival crowd surge
During a Travis Scott concert, a crowd of 50,000 rushed the stage it killed 8 people in the stampede. The singer said in a statement that he is devastated by the events, and conveyed that he will cover the funeral costs of the deceased.
Bharti, with her sister Namrata Shahani and cousin Mohit Bellani, went to attend the concert together but lost each other as the crowd surged towards the stage where Travis Scott was performing at. Namrata and Mohit both lost their mobile phones and were not able to contact Bharti.
Mohit said, “Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos. It was like a sinkhole. People were falling on top of each other. There were like layers of bodies on the ground, like two people thick. We were fighting to come up to the top and breathe to stay alive.” He further says that Bharti lost oxygen for several minutes and because of that, her brain stem got swollen to almost 90%.
Bharti’s gruesome condition
Bharti is currently on a ventilator, and her family is deliberately waiting for her movement. Bharti was taken to the Houston Methodist Hospital by ambulance, but her parents were unaware about it until found her in hospital, “They took us to her room, and she was bleeding and on a ventilator. Me and my wife were too shocked. We can’t even stand in there,” according to her father, Sunny Shahani.
According to the doctors, the chances of survival are nothing. In Houston Methodist Hospital, Bharti was given CPR. Her family also said that she suffered multiple heart attacks.