A MacBook Pro inside a backpack might have saved a passenger’s life in the Fort Lauderdale airport shooting this afternoon that left five dead and eight wounded.
“The backpack saved my life,” Steve Frappier said, speaking on CNN’s “AC360.” “[I] dropped and the backpack was still on my back and I was turned in such a way where that at one point when the shooter shot toward my direction … there was a bullet that ricocheted.”
Frappier, who described himself as sheltered on the ground “like a tortoise with the packpack on me” when the bullet struck, said the bullet ricocheted around the backpack and the notebook.
“I felt something hit my back,” he said speaking to CNN’s Anderson Cooper. “It was only later when I went to the bathroom to check myself out that the bullet had entered my backpack, hit my laptop and then later when I gave my backpack over to the FBI for investigation they found the bullet in the
pocket of my backpack.”
Given the angle and the ricochet, the bullet would have entered Frappier’s back.
Frappier said he had quickly stuffed his laptop into his bag, leaving it open while disembarking from his flight earlier.
“It hit just so through the open backpack, exited, ran through the laptop and the casing and landed in an interior pocket of the backpack,” he said.
The shooting spree occurred in the baggage claim area of Terminal 2 at the Fort Lauderdale airport. Officials have stated that the suspect, Esteban Santiago, carried his firearm in his checked luggage before he began firing.
It’s unknown what Santiago’s motivation might have been. Santiago was taken into custody without incident upon surrendering.
Stay tuned for additional details as they become available.
Via CNN