22-Year-Old Student Bharti Shahani Dies After Sustaining Injuries at Astroworld Festival (UPDATE)

Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old student at Texas A&M University, has been declared brain dead after suffering injuries at Astroworld Festival over the weekend.

Bharti Shahani, 22-year-old Texas A&M student and Astroworld victim
Getty

Image via GoFundMe

Bharti Shahani, 22-year-old Texas A&M student and Astroworld victim

UPDATED 11/11, 3:00 p.m. ET: Bharti Shahani has died, her family attorney confirmed. She is the 9th victim of Astroworld Festival.

Shahani’s family spoke publicly after announcing her death.

See original story below.

A 22-year-old college student has been declared brain dead after sustaining severe injuries during the Astroworld Festival crowd surge over the weekend.

ABC 13 Houston reports Bharti Shahani, a senior at Texas A&M University, is one of three Astroworld Festival victims still in the hospital. Her family has confirmed she is currently on a ventilator and has shown no brain activity since arriving at Houston Methodist Hospital early Saturday morning. Doctors told her parents Bharti 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, as well as her cousin Mohit Bellani. They 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.”

Shahani’s family has set up a GoFundMe for her; at the time of publication, it had received nearly $44,000 with a $50,000 goal.

Last Friday’s event left eight people dead and over 300 injured, resulting so far in at least 35 lawsuits against Travis Scott, Live Nation, and others. “There will be hundreds of plaintiffs by Friday, if not thousands,” lawyer Alex Hilliard said Monday.

Latest in Music