Shooting victim Kevin Ortiz wasn’t wearing a bulletproof vest during the San Bernardino rampage – but his iPhone may have saved his life.
Ortiz, 24, a county environmental inspector, was shot five times — twice in the thigh and in the arms and shoulder as he hid under a table while Syed Rizwan Farook and Tashfeen Malik sprayed bullets at the Inland Regional Center on Wednesday, the MailOnline reported.
But a potentially fatal bullet that would have entered his chest hit his phone in the shirt pocket — leaving a ghastly hole in the device.
“He had two phones in his pockets, one work phone and one home phone, his mother, Tina Marie Ortiz, told the news site. “He was hit by five bullets but the other, it must have been the sixth, hit his phone and got deflected.”
She said Ortiz underwent surgery and is doing better.
“They were at a Christmas function and he was at a table with co-workers. They were making speeches and the guy at the front said that they were taking a break,” she said. “He heard shots coming from the lobby and all of a sudden, the doors opened up and they [Farook and Malik] started shooting.
“It was the people at the front who got shot first because they were the first to go outside. He was injured and under the table. He said they came back and started shooting the people who were hiding,” she said.
“He’s sad right now because he knows some of the people he was with didn’t make it,” she added.