Fort Lauderdale Airport Shooting Survivor Alleges His MacBook Pro Stopped a Bullet, Saved His Life

Last Friday afternoon, the latest in a string of violent rampages was carried out on American soil — when a man identified by authorities as Esteban Santiago dismounted his semi-automatic weapon and opened fire on a swath of unsuspecting travelers near the Terminal 2 baggage claim at Florida’s Ft. Lauderdale/Hollywood International Airport. And while the tragic and senseless event unfortunately claimed the lives of five people, and injured eight, one eyewitness survivor of the attacks recently came out suggesting that Apple’s MacBook Pro “saved his life,” according to an exclusive CNN interview.

Steve Frappier, of Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, was patiently waiting for his bags at Terminal 2 when, he alleges, in an interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, that he began to hear the sound of gunshots break out. At this point, Frappier recalls, he fell to the ground, with his backpack on his back, in a desperate attempt to protect himself.

“The backpack saved my life,” Frappier recounted, speaking with Anderson Cooper, host of 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.”

Once the coast was clear, Frappier recalls that he got up and walked over to the bathroom to check himself, and his backpack, out. It was then that he realized, contrary to what he thought was a piece of luggage that fell on top of him during the ordeal, that it was actually a stray bullet that struck his backpack, entering through the soft, mesh front pocket and colliding with the edge of his school-issued MacBook Pro.

“I felt something hit my back,” Frappier recalls. “It was only later when I went to the bathroom to check myself out that [I realized] 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.”

As noted, Frappier immediately consulted with the FBI, who was able to confirm that his backpack had, in fact, been struck by the same brand of 9 mm bullet that came from Santiago’s weapon.

In the interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper, Frappier admits having decided at the absolute last moment to slide his MacBook Pro into his backpack while getting ready to exit the plane. As noted by the FBI in its brief investigation into the incident, the bullet appeared to enter Frappier’s pack through a small opening of the mesh in the front flap, at which point it collided with the laptop’s display, continued through the aluminum unibody, battery, and other components, while quietly exiting through one of the machine’s side air vents.

“The way that [the bullet] ricocheted and entered my bag. That would have been my back,” Frappier noted to Anderson Cooper. “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.”

What would your response be if you knew your life had been saved by laptop?
 Let us know in the comments below!