Kylie Jenner has issued a statement about the deadly crowd surge at her boyfriend Travis Scott’s Astroworld musical festival in Houston that claimed the lives of eight concertgoers, including a 14-year-old, and injured hundreds more.
The makeup mogul, who’s currently expecting a second child with the hip-hop star, attended the opening night of the planned two-day festival at NRG Park on Friday with the couple’s 3-year-old daughter and sister Kendall Jenner.
Seated in a separate section above the crowd, Jenner was unharmed when chaos broke out among the more than 50,000 attendees, as fans rushed the stage during Scott’s headlining set in what authorities called a “mass casualty incident.”
In a note posted on her Instagram story early Sunday, Jenner said, “Travis and I are broken and devastated” by the tragedy.
“My thoughts and prayers are with all who lost their lives, were injured or affected in any way by yesterday’s events,” she wrote. “And also for Travis who I know cares deeply for his fans and the Houston community.”
She went on to defend Scott over criticisms that he continued to perform during the crowd surge that led to the deadly melee despite desperate pleas from the crowd.
“I want to make it clear we weren’t aware of any fatalities until the news came out after the show, and in no world would have continued filming or performing,” she added. “I am sending my deepest condolences to all the families during this difficult time and will be praying for the healing of everyone who has been impacted.”
Jenner shared multiple videos from the event, including a since-deleted clip that showed an emergency vehicle trying to make its way through the crowd. The reality TV star was widely criticized for leaving the video on her social media account for hours after the event.
“The fact you can very clearly see in Kylie Jenner’s story THAT SHE HERSELF FILMED a medic vehicle trying to pass through the crowd without anyone making them way is absurd and shows just how blind they were to what’s happening,” one person wrote on Twitter.
“I know it’s not her fault, but Kylie Jenner storying this video at #ASTROWORLDFest as a literal EMT car rolls thru the crowd as the show continues on is so incredibly dystopian,” another added.
Echoing his previous statements, Scott also further addressed the incident in a front-facing video posted on Instagram Saturday, saying he could “never imagine anything like this happening” at his concerts.
“My fans really mean the world to me and I always wanna leave them with a positive experience and anytime I can make out anything that’s going on, I stop the show and help them get the help they need, you know?” he said. “I could just never imagine the severity of the situation.”
Scott went on to explain that his team is fully cooperating with the investigation into the incident and urged anyone with information about the fatalities to contact the local authorities.
Disturbing videos taken from the event show people scaling the stage and begging concert staff to halt the show amid the chaos. While Scott has taken heat on social media for not intervening more, the rapper briefly halted his set multiple times to call for help from the venue’s security staff before continuing to perform.
“There are a lot of unanswered questions,” Houston Mayor Sylvester Turner said in a news conference Saturday, according to CNN. “Over the next several days, several weeks — could be even longer — we’ll take an in-depth look at everything that took place, why it took place, what steps we can do moving forward to mitigate an incident of this kind from taking place at any other point in time.”