Travis. At what point did
Travis ever tell you at what
point during his performance,
or if at any point during his
performance he was notified
that anything was happening? He
was never notified. And in fact,
what ended up being developed
before the OR during the course
of the investigation is that at
20 minutes until 10:00 o'clock,
the police officer contacted
somebody from the security company
and the head of Travis's security.
And told them as soon as
Drake leaves the stage,
Travis needs to in the concert.
So these two individuals went
backstage and they met with the
guy who who's the he's called an
auto tune operator who could speak
to Travis through his earpiece.
And he said as soon as Drake leaves
the stage, we need to close the show.
Do your final number and you
need to get off the stage.
Nobody knew why or at
least nobody in our camp did why and so.
As soon as the cons as soon as
Drake left the stage the auto
tuner operator told him do your
closing number and get
off the stage and he did,
and so that's one thing.
The police were always,
in agreement with is that Travis
did everything the police asked
of them even those incorrectly
but he did everything to his
ask of and he closed the show.
Exactly when they told him to do it
do you know what charges didn't consider?
Well, now see we're a little
bit unclear with that.
I mean we we have nobody could
really articulate what the
possible charges would be.
So we assume that it's involuntary
manslaughter, negligence homicide,
reckless endangerment.
There's all sorts of possible
charges it could be.
But then when you start looking
at each charge individually,
you realize there's really no
evidence to suggest these things.
There's two ways they could
have come to Travis.
One would have done if they.
Believe that he was involved in
the planning of the concert,
the planning of the venue and failed
to provide proper security or that
it was set up in a negligent manner
and you could predicted people
could have been killed but by
contract Travis had nothing to do
with that that that was all Live Nation.
So then they look at did Travis do were
say anything from stage that could
have caught that could have caused this.
For instance,
had he said something like everybody riot,
everybody go crazy storm the
stage and people were hurt,
that could be criminal.
But he didn't do that.
And so after they they reviewed
the tape over and over and over,
the police concluded that he didn't
say or do anything that would
make him criminally liable because
he never encouraged people to do
anything that resulted in other
people being hurt. Did it ever?
Was it ever
established why the city officer?
And the head of Travis's security
told the auto tune guy to
close it out after Drake left.
Did anybody ever find out
why they never explained hey,
people are getting crushed why
there was not more urgency
placed on that message? No,
we don't know that the police that
the officer who I believe is really
the head officer in charge of Hpd's
contingent that night. Who was that?
I believe his officer satellite.
But I'm not positive that he
was the ranking officer of the
scene from what I understand and.
To my knowledge,
what he told them is tell Travis as soon
as Drake leaves the state shut it down.
So you know what we have since
found out is apparently at around
9:40 they declared it an emergency
disaster area and so the police
decided not to close it at that time.
In fact, it was Chief Venner the
day after the concert that held
a press conference saying that he
huddled with the fire department
with the M people from NRG.
And CSC security company and they decided
the safest time to close the concert
that wouldn't lead to crowd riots.
And you know,
if you go back and look at the tape,
that's what the chief said.
So they made the determination what
time to end the concert and Travis ended
it as soon as he was told to end it.
What,
you know, we've been reaching out
to some of the family members and
obviously there are civil cases pending.
But they've said that they want criminal
charges and they would be disappointed.
None. Do you have a message
to any of those families?
Yeah, I I certainly do.
I mean, I feel sorry for the loss.
And and, you know,
within days of of concert being over,
I contacted either the families
or their lawyers offering to pay
funeral expenses on behalf of Travis.
And every one of them,
even the ones that said, yeah,
OK, then came back and said
that I feel bad for them.
I know they lost loved ones,
but Travis is not responsible
bringing criminal charges against
them who will not ease their pain.
I've lost the child,
I know what it's like,
and then it's a horrible thing to live with.
But indicting Travis for something
he's clearly not responsible for is
not going to ease their pain at all.
Now I hope they're paying,
you know,
something they'll be able to live with.
Are they still involved
in civil litigation with?
Travis and and other people and
there's there's still a number
of civil cases going on.
I mean I know the plaintiffs
lawyers are very much wanting
an indictment because you know,
that would allow them to make more money,
it would make their case easier.
But the the, the civil lawyers
that I know well who are involved
in that case have known for a
while there is no criminal case.
It's still nerve racking for us because
there's a possibility until today.
But deep down,
we know there's no criminal case.
When
your client was performing,
did he look out in the crowd and
did what did he see out there? He
sees nothing. In fact,
that's one of the things we did
present to the grand jury is the
lighting scheme for that concert.
There were hundreds and hundreds of lights,
all of which were trained on Travis.
No matter where he was on the stage,
lights coming straight at him,
lights coming from above him and lights
coming from below pointed up at him. So his.
Range of visibility is
limited to the 1st 456 rows
of the stage and the only time he
can see further out is when the
lights start flickering on and
off on the crowd. But that's just
instantaneous. At the same time he's
walking, you know, down the runway or
he's running down the other runway. So
he's not stopping to look out there
and look over all the crowd. And
you know, we we talked with the
prosecutor about it who has.
Knowledge and experience with
lighting and understands that
when you're up on a lit stage
like that and the crowded start,
you can't see what's going on,
especially 405060 feet back
and you presented that to the prosecutors
to present to the grand jury. Do
you know that they show that
to the grand jurors? I
don't have any reason to think they didn't.
The Harris County Da's office
has always been pretty open
about laying defense lawyers
present a written not an oral.
Version of their position,
which is what we did.
There's no bill today
mean that there could be
no charges in the future
if there's new evidence
that's presented. If there's new
evidence presented later on, yeah,
they it depends what the issues were.
They were presented to the grand jury to
begin with and I don't know if if they,
because it is secretive,
they're not going to tell me that they
present murder, reckless endangerment,
involuntary manslaughter.
But typically, once the case has
been no build, you don't see
it resurrected. I want to be
clear on one thing you had
said. So when you said that
satellite and head of Travis'
security with the auto tunes guy,
did they tell Travis ended
after Drake has finished?
Or do one more number after
Drake do your closing number?
His closing number is like a
minute and a half, two minutes.
And if you look at the tape,
as soon as Drake leaves the stage,
he does an abbreviated
version of his last song.
And then tells everybody,
be careful going home.
I love you, you know,
go use or whatever.
But he ended it very
within two minutes after.
In your investigation in supporting Travis,
did you ever find out about
the people who tried to tell
like the camera operators?
Hey, people are getting travel,
anything like that. Why?
More warnings within the crowd
were heated. But you know,
I've saw some of those things
and there's people that are.
Pretty far back in the crowd
yelling at a camera operator and the
camera operators trying to listen
to them and listen to the people
talking in his ear and keeping
his camera trained on what he's
supposed to keep it trained on.
And so I don't know if the camera
operators really paying attention to
what's being said because he's up like
your camera operators trying to do his job.
But they're so far back in the crowd,
you know, people are saying,
well, I was yelling,
I don't know why Travis couldn't hear me.
Well, because there's 38 or
39,000 people screaming and
yelling and jumping up and down.
Travis never hurt anybody
yelling to stop the show,
hear people yelling,
but he couldn't hear any particular
things that anybody was saying.
What do you think people should?
Is there anything Houstonians
or community city leaders or anybody
writ large involved in that's like
this could learn from everything
that's happened last year or two?
It's hard to say, and I'll tell you why.
You know one criticism that that people
were faced when all this began and
there should have been more security?
Well, between the 700 security
guards and 530 Houston police
officers there that were there,
that was the largest contingent of security
ever for any event in
Houston outside of the Super
Bowl. And so if you had had another two
hundred 500,000 security cards there,
I'm not sure it would have mattered
as far as the the festival.
Type of concert where everybody's
standing up and they're in pins.
There's tons of festivals that do that.
They just did a similar set up at Glastonbury
last weekend for Elton John with over
100,000 people and nobody was hurt.
The variable is, is that the crowd
that was attracted to this concert is
young people. They had been pent up
because there's been no big festivals
like that since COVID started and I think
people came and they were overexcited.
And people were pushing and shoving,
and I don't know if all the security
in the world could have stopped
that unless you had a security
guard every three or four people.
And that's just not practical.
Specifically about security was
also about crowd management.
Nobody was paying attention before
Travis ever took the stage that
the people at the front were so
packed in they couldn't even sit
down that nobody noticed that.
Well, see. And
The thing is about that. You could very
well be right. My investigation
focused on Travis.
If I was representing Live Nation,
if I was representing the security company,
if I was representing the people in
the Control Center who were supposed
to be watching all this on video,
I may feel totally different.
But from Travis's point of view,
he doesn't have people that
are surveying the crowd to see
if he should take the stage.
The people that do that are the people
that are producing the concert and.
I don't know, maybe they should have
been able to spot that early on.
Because my understanding from what
I've been told by law enforcement is
that most of the injuries that took
place took place between 9:00
o'clock and about nine 10915,
which means right before the concert
started and within the first
few minutes of the concert.
So if that's true and and that is
what the command center is showing,
I mean I'm told there are text
messages just a couple minutes after 9.
About people being pulled out from the crowd
and having to get medical care.
So, you know, I'm really not qualified
to say whether or not they should have
stopped the concert at that point.
All I know is they didn't stop the concert.
And if they wanted to,
the easiest thing in the world to
do would have been to tell Travis,
stop the concert and it would
have stopped, you know,
HPD before the last time there was a
a a Astor Royal Concert 2 years earlier.
When he was 2 minutes over curfew,
somebody went back there at HPD,
I think it was Chief Benner and just flip
the switch and the concert was over.
It ended when HPD said to end it.
So they have the ability to do it.
Should they have known?
That's the question for somebody else.
Did you speak to Travis before this?
What was, what was his
thoughts as today was going to
happen? We talk all the time and
he's been extremely confident.
Very hopeful. You know, he,
of course he's nervous.
This has had a huge impact on his career.
He lost a lot of sponsorships,
a lot of endorsements,
a lot of concerts and festivals when
we sign him because they have to get
him insured and as long as there was
a pending criminal investigation,
it makes it extremely difficult
to get insured. Now
he's going to be able to
pick back up where he
left off, which is great because,
you know. In this country,
everybody's presumed innocent and
the police have done one of the most
exhaustive investigations in history
of the use of Police Department.
The DA's office has had several
senior top management working on
this case and if there was anything
they could have indicted before,
they would have and they did.
So that tells you that this
guy should not have, you know,
he's been punished severely
through collateral consequences.
Would he ever do a festival
like this again? Sure. Oh,
he's been in festivals over
the last year. And Thailand.
I think there's one in Brazil.
Would he do it?
Yeah, I think he would do it.
Will the city of Houston or
NRT do it? I have no idea. When
did he exactly find out 10
people that died in his concert?
My understanding is it was later
that night that as long as he as
soon as the concert was over,
his security job is to get him
off the premises before you know,
the crowd starts off blowing out.
So he left and I know later that
night he was told there was a
problem without knowing all the
details and then he went home.
That's when he was built in
exactly what the problem was.
So while he was at the concert,
he had no idea.
Of course, nobody did. You know, the first
call I got that night was like,
I left there about 8:00 o'clock,
and I got a call at 11 saying that
people were overdosing in the crowd
and then somebody was going out,
sticking them in the neck with
the needle and killing them.
And so I went back to ask
the world like 1130, and when I
got there, and that was the
police chief and the fire marshal,
everybody was under the assumption
that there was a crazy guy with
the needle poisoning people.
And so nobody is really sure
what happened until some point,
you know, later that night.
And to be clear, no one
has been indicted today. That's correct.
He said that Travis
is one of one of he was
one of six people who
yes, they were targets
of the grand jury and
they're six or can answer 6.
If he was one of us, yes, he would testify.
No, but but unlike some
of the other people, he
did sit down with the police
and spent hours talking
to them. And it was interesting because
when I first got involved, he said I said,
well they want to meet with you.
He says bring them to my house.
And so I think you and I need to
have a very long conversation first
he So I'm going to talk to them.
If you don't want to be here, that's fine.
Because he was adamant I didn't do anything.
I'm not going to refuse to answer.
Absolutely. And the police
showed up at his house and they spent
two 2 1/2 hours sitting at his table
talking to him, asking questions,
reporting the interview with
our permission. And he's been
100% cooperative. There's
a statement from Travis Party
and Grand Jury Packer, no.
But the police, the the
DA has the statement. The police
have the statement.
It's a lengthy reporting, you know,
which is probably a better indicator
of the truth than a written statement
that your lawyer draws up for
everything they could think to ask
for. He answers without hesitation.