Bharti Shahani, a 22-year-old Texas A&M student injured during last week's Astroworld festival, died Wednesday from injuries sustained at the event. The death was confirmed by her family at a Thursday news conference.
Shahani was declared dead at 6:50 p.m. Wednesday night after being on a ventilator with no sign of brain activity for days following Friday's festival. Eight others died and 25 were hospitalized after a crowd rushed the stage during Travis Scott's set. Among those still hospitalized is a 9-year-old boy in a medically induced coma.
“I want my baby back," said Shahani's mother Karishma. "I won’t be able to live without her. It’s impossible. I’m empty.”
Shahani attended the show with her cousin Bellani, and sister, Namrata, and the three were separated from each other after the crowd surge began after 9 p.m.
Her sister said the two were holding hands when things started to get out of control.
"She was always looking out for me," Namrata Shahani said. "The last thing she said to me was, ‘are you OK?’"
The next time she saw her sister, Bharti Shahani was on a ventilator in the emergency room at Houston Methodist Hospital.
The family’s lawyer, James Lassiter, said that the young woman could be seen in a video shared on social media being dropped from a gurney.
One video shared by TMZ shows a seemingly unconscious young woman being transported out of the crowd on an emergency stretcher. The stretcher, which was being passed to Houston police officers, is then dropped. The woman's head strikes the ground. The woman's face is obscured, and it was not immediately clear if it was the same incident.
Lassiter and the family declined to comment on the investigation of the concert or any future litigation.
Instead, the family spoke of her computer science major that she dedicated to her family and how she loved to walk her husky, Blue. She was the oldest of three daughters, and the “glue” of her family.
"She was like (an) angel for us," her father Sunny Shahani said. "I don't want somebody else's daughter to go like this."
Bharti’s cousin Mohit, who was the first person to see her at Houston Methodist Hospital after she was admitted, said he completely shut down when doctors told him she was unconscious, had two heart attacks and was intubated.
"This was 100% avoidable," said Mohit Bellani. “This was an act of pure, pure brutality."
The Shahani family previously filed a complaint against festival organizers in Harris County District Court. That suit also named rapper Travis Scott and others as defendants.
That case has since been non-suited, and the family has switched attorneys.
More than 70 lawsuits have been filed since Friday's tragedy.
Scott and concert organizers have thus far declined to comment on the pending litigation.
Paul DeBenedetto contributed to this report.
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