(CNN) — A survivor of Sunday’s Las Vegas massacre says he feels abashed about leaving the music festival unscathed while at least 59 others lost their lives around him in the deadliest mass shooting in modern American history.
“I’m actually feeling a little bit guilty now,” an emotional Brian Claypool said Tuesday on CNN’s “New Day” after seeing footage from the attack.
“I’ve avoided seeing the victims and seeing pictures of people that were killed, and I was there. They’re a lot younger than me and they don’t get to go home. I get to go home today, back to LA to see my daughter, and they don’t.”
He told anchor Chris Cuomo, “I’ve heard heroic acts and I’m now processing, ‘Did I do enough?’ I’m going through some guilt now. Did I help enough people?'”
Claypool, a defense attorney who was in a VIP section at the festival, explained that during the attack he was ushered into “a little room” where he found five or six young women in a corner crying.
He said he hoped he had done enough to keep them calm and had even found himself subconsciously standing in front of them protectively.
Claypool concluded, “I want you to know and your audience to know how beautiful those people were at that festival.”
