This is the moment a father who helped save 30 lives during the Las Vegas massacre before being shot in the neck spoke with the cop who rescued him.
Jonathan Smith was reduced to tears as off-duty San Diego officer Tom McGrath praised him as a ‘warrior’ and the two men said they view each other as ‘brothers’ following the attack which killed 58 and left more than 500 hurt.
Smith told how McGrath plugged the wound with his finger while McGrath – who was speaking on the phone – recalled telling Smith ‘now you have to fight’ as he went weak from blood loss.
Though Smith insists he is not a hero, referring to himself as ‘a normal human who saw lives in danger’, McGrath accused him of being too modest.
‘As someone who trains for things like this, I think he did something extraordinary,’ McGrath told CNN’s Erin Burnett.
‘He showed tremendous bravery, he inspires me, and he may not want to take all the credit but he did a wonderful job and I was just happy to be there to help him.’
Recalling the moments after he got shot, Smith said : ‘I remember him helping me get in the back of a pickup truck with another young lady who had a gunshot wound.
‘I kept telling him “I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die”, and he told me “you’re not going to die, look at me, you’re not going to die.”
‘He said it as they took me out and put me on the concrete in front of a patrol car. [I remember] the moment he put his finger inside the wound just to stop the bleeding.
‘It’s stuff like that I won’t forget. I owe him my life.’
Speaking about the same moment from his perspective, McGrath added: ‘I just remember getting to that patrol vehicle, I told him “now is the time to fight.”
‘I knew he was feeling weak but I told him “now is the time to fight.”
‘He’s got that warrior mentality, he went into the sound of gunfire… that’s what made him go back in and that’s what kept him alive.’
His family have now set up a GoFundMe page to help with his medical bills. Doctors say he may have to live with the bullet lodged in his neck for the rest of his life because it is too dangerous to remove.
Smith and McGrath’s story is just one of dozens of tales of incredible heroism to emerge from the tragedy on the Vegas Strip.
Last night it was revealed that a man pictured using his body to shield a woman from the gunfire is Matthew Cobos, a young US Army soldier who bravely ran into the danger zone to help others.
Cobos was pictured on top of the woman as she lay on the ground, while shielding her eyes so she couldn’t see the carnage around her.
Incredibly the pair managed to escape the shooting by running behind a car during a break in the gunfire.
Cobos is then understood to have run back into the firing line in order to save others, drawing on his military training to plug wounds with his finger and apply tourniquets to those who were badly injured.
He is understood to be back home now with family in California. Cobos lives in Hawaii where he is a cavalry scout with the US Army.
Meanwhile it emerged cab driver Corianne Langdon, 58, helped to transport blood-soaked victims to hospital while putting herself in harm’s way.
Langdon recorded the haunting moments of calm as the attack started but before people had realized what was happening, then the moments of sheer panic as wounded concert-goers jumped into the back of her cab.
