Las Vegas: Final selfie before carnage began

Adrian Murfitt was having the time of his life, surrounded by friends and the music that he loved.

And then the shots began.

The 35-year-old from Alaska was with friend Brian MacKinnon at the outdoor Route 91 Harvest festival in Las Vegas when homicidal Stephen Paddock began spraying bullets from his hotel room 32 floors above the crowd.

In a heartbreaking Facebook post Mackinnon told how Murfitt "died in my arms".

Adrian Murfitt took this selfie at the concert before he was killed. Photo / Facebook

"He is one of the happiest people I know," MacKinnon told KTUU. "Always in a good mood, and was nothing less than my brother."

Murfitt made the trip south to Las Vegas for two reasons - to enjoy the country music festival and also to celebrate a successful fishing season, which he had just finished.

MacKinnon told the Alaska Dispatch News of his friend's horrifying final moments. "We were taking a picture and it (the bullet) went through his neck."

Many people did their best to save him. "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."

MacKinnon said a ricocheted bullet also hit the brim of his own hat, knocking it upward and off his head.

He said emergency service workers had to convince him to leave his friend's body as the massacre continued.

"I just got up and kept looking around ... There were just bodies everywhere."