Adrian Murfitt, a 35-year-old Anchorage, Alaska, fisherman, died in his friend’s arms after he was shot during the mass shooting at a country music festival in Las Vegas on Sunday night.
“Sadly he died in my arms,” wrote Brian MacKinnon under a photo of himself with Murfitt at the concert. “I don’t really know what else to say at this time. I’m really sorry.”
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According to reports from Alaska Dispatch News, the two friends had been sitting at an Anchorage sports bar just weeks ago when Murfitt bought tickets for the concert MacKinnon had been wanting to attend.
"He showed me the phone and he'd already bought tickets, and he was like, 'You're going,'" MacKinnon said in an ADN interview. "I was like, 'I'm going.'"
Avonna Murfitt, Adrian's mother, said he had just finished a summer of fishing in Chignik and that it was “one of the best years they've ever had.”
Murfitt and MacKinnon were in the crowd close to the stage when gunman Stephan Paddock started shooting at the concert from a nearby hotel window.
"We were taking a picture and it went through his neck," said MacKinnon. "There's a lot of amazing people — there was nurses, doctors, firemen. Everybody who was at that concert really jumped on it, did everything they could. We just couldn't save him."
Like many survivors, MacKinnon didn’t immediately recognize the sound of gunshots.
"Thought it was firecrackers, and the second round of gunshots — you heard the gunfire, and then you hear the bullets hit the ground, and metal and people and stuff," MacKinnon said.
MacKinnon, along with others, ended up in the basement of the nearby Tropicana resort and was kept there for about an hour until he was allowed to return to his hotel room.
The attack left at least 59 people dead and 527 injured, according to the New York Times.
