Bin Laden Shooter: Former Navy Seal Says Osama Died Afraid
The former Navy Seal claiming to be the man who killed Osama bin Laden in 2011 is speaking out about that night in Pakistan.
Rob O'Neill, who was publicly identified last week for the first time, said he doesn't care about people criticizing his story.
"I don't care if I'm 'The Shooter,' and there are people who think I'm not. So whatever," he said to CNN. "Osama bin Laden died like a p***y ... he died afraid, and he knew we were there to kill him. And that's closure."
However, other witness accounts of the Seal Team Six raid on the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, differ from O'Neill's. The 38-year-old said the point man missed when he tried to shoot the al-Queda leader, so O'Neill stepped in and shot the target himself, striking him twice in the head.
"I rolled past [the point man] into the room, just inside the doorway," O'Neill recalled. "There was bin Laden, standing there. He had his hands on a woman's shoulders pushing her ahead ... in that second I shot him, two times in the forehead.
"Bap! Bap! The second time, as he is going down. He crumbled to the floor in front of his bed and I hit him again."
Seal Matt Bissonette, who also was on the mission, wrote a book, "No Easy Day," about the events and said the point man shot bin Laden, hitting him in the head and a teammate then shot him in the chest.
The exploits that led to the terror leader's killing were also dramatized in the 2012 film "Zero Dark Thirty," that followed the events leading up to the operation.
"The most important thing that I've learned in the last two years is to me it doesn't matter anymore if I am 'The Shooter.' The team got him," O'Neill said. "Regardless of the negativity that comes with it, I don't give a f**k. We got him."
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