Young boy becomes 10th fatal victim in US music festival stampede

CHICAGO, United States

A 9-year-old boy has become the latest fatality from the crowd surge at a Travis Scott concert two weeks ago in the US state of Texas.

Ezra Blount of Dallas, now the 10th fatal victim of the stampede, was brought to a hospital the night of the Astroworld Music Festival in Houston, showing no brain activity, having been crushed under the crowd during the concert.

His father, in a post on a GoFundMe page, established to defray his son's medical costs, and said Ezra was sitting atop his shoulders, when the boy became lost in the crowd during the stampede. His father says he lost consciousness and later frantically searched for Ezra, only to realize that the boy was already in the hospital.

Ezra's family claims that the boy was "kicked, stepped on, and trampled and nearly crushed to death" in the crowd surge.

The Blount family is now represented by high-profile civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump and is seeking at least $1 million dollars in damages.

Hundreds of concert-goers were injured in the stampede, and more than a dozen are still in the hospital, while a criminal investigation is looking into the concert promoter, Live Nation, and Travis Scott himself.

After the death of the 9th Astroworld victim, Bharti Shahani, last week, her family's attorney lashed out at the concert in filing a $20 million dollar wrongful death lawsuit.

Attorney James Lassiter said the concert failed "at every level".

"Everyone gets an 'F'," he said, "from the performer down to the ticket sales."

"The way that this festival was put on, was a recipe for disaster that these people cooked up. They ignored safety, they put profits over safety and as a result, we have this tragedy."