A man narrowly escaped injury when a bullet pierced the backpack he was wearing during the shooting rampage at Fort Lauderdale International Airport on Friday.

“The backpack saved my life,” Steve Frappier told Anderson Cooper in an interview on CNN.

Frappier and other travellers dove to the ground to escape the gunfire. Amid the chaos, a bullet hit his backpack, damaging a laptop that was inside, Frappier told CNN. He was not injured.

“It hit just so through the open backpack,” Frappier said, adding that the bullet “exited, ran through the laptop and the casing and landed in an interior pocket of the backpack,” according to CNN.

“I gave my backpack over to the FBI for investigation they found the bullet in the pocket of my backpack,”Frappier said.

The suspected shooter, who was identified as 26-year-old Esteban Santiago, opened fire inside the baggage claim area of Terminal 2 at the airport Friday afternoon. Santiago is in federal custody.

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