Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old college student at Texas A&M University, has been declared brain dead after sustaining severe injuries during the fatal Astroworld Festival crowd surge in Houston, TX over the weekend.
Shahani is one of three Astroworld Festival victims still in the hospital following the festival, which saw eight dead and 300 injured.
As ABC 13 Houston reports, Shanani’s family has confirmed she is currently on a ventilator and has shown no brain activity since arriving at Houston Methodist Hospital on Saturday morning. The student suffered multiple heart attacks in an ambulance on the way to the hospital.
“The doctors, they say the chances of survival are nothing, which I have not even spoken to my wife until now,” father Sunny Shahani told the local news station. “We keep saying we’ll pray. I request all of Houston to pray for her. Maybe the prayers might work as a miracle for her.”
Shahani attended the festival with her younger sister Namrata, the pair became separated when the crowd surged.
“Once one person fell, people started toppling like dominos,” Bellani explained. “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.”
Bellani added, “I think she lost oxygen for 10 minutes one time and seven minutes at another time. So her brain stem was swollen to like 90 percent almost.”
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Shahani’s family has launched a GoFundMe to help raise money to cover mounting expenses whilst Shahani recovers. You can donate here.
In the wake of the Astroworld tragedy, people injured in the deadly crowd surge, as well as families of those that lost their lives, have filed more than 30 lawsuits against Travis Scott. Several of the suits also name festival promoter Live Nation and other event organizers as defendants.
