Houston police have walked back the report that an Astroworld Festival security guard was injected with a needle during the fatal crowd surge during Travis Scott’s set that left eight dead and many more injured. As first-hand accounts rolled out following last Friday’s event, which has triggered numerous lawsuits over injuries, a security guard claimed to have lost consciousness after he was stuck in the neck with a needle. Houston Police Chief Troy Finner seemed to confirm the report on Saturday, saying, “medical staff did notice notice a prick that was similar to a prick that you would get if somebody was trying to inject.”

“We did locate that security guard,” Finner said in a news briefing today. “His story is not consistent with that. He says he was struck in the head. He went unconscious. He woke up in the security tent. He says that no one injected drugs in him.”

This news comes in tandem with the revelation that Scott reportedly attended a party at Dave & Buster’s after his Astroworld set, apparently unaware that eight people had died and dozens more injured. Meanwhile, TMZ reports that members of the Houston Police Department were present at Scott’s Astroworld set and shooting video with their phones but were “oblivious” that the event had become deadly.

UPDATE: Travis Scott’s attorney Edwin F. McPherson has responded to the “ongoing conversations and misinformation surrounding Friday’s tragedy.” McPherson’s statement is below.

There has been multiple finger-pointing, much of which has been by city officials, who have sent inconsistent messages and have backtracked from original statements.

Houston Police Chief Troy Finner was quoted in the New York Times as saying, “You cannot just close when you got 50,000 and over 50,000 individuals. We have to worry about rioting, riots, when you have a group that’s that young.” Yet, just a short time later, Chief Finner states the responsibility to stop the show falls on Travis.

It was reported that the Operations Plan designated that only the festival director and executive producers have authority to stop the show, neither of which is part of Travis’s crew. This also runs afoul of HPD’s own previous actions when it shut down the power and sound at this very festival when the performance ran over 5 minutes back in 2019.

Investigations should start proceeding over finger-pointing so that together, we can identify exactly what transpired and how we can prevent anything like this from happening again.