HUNTSVILLE, Ala. -- On Saturday, hundreds of people in Alabama were captivated by an impromptu speech by Clint Lampkin, a man who claimed to be a survivor of the Pulse nightclub shooting in Orlando.
“I was in the bar when it all happened," Lampkin told the crowd at the Rocket City Pride Memorial Service in Huntsville. "It's been hard on me... seeing people get shot."
Lampkin said the hate he witnessed first-hand is still overwhelming.
“It’s really strong. I mean not just for my friend but all the others that lost their lives. It’s hard you know. It really is. It’s really sad," Lampkin says.
But now, Lampkin's story is being called into question.
One of Lampkin's Facebook friends sent WHNT a screenshot of one of Lampkin's Facebook posts from June 12, which shows he shared the story about the shooting and wrote: "Glad I wasn't at that one."
Lampkin told WHNT his Facebook account was "hacked" and that he never made that post. He still claims he was at the Pulse Nightclub the night of the shooting.
“I have really bad anxiety attacks, so I just kinda, I don’t know, my mind is just gone," he told WHNT.
WHNT asked him for additional details surrounding the night of the shooting, and he gave the same response -- that the trauma of what he witnessed has erased his memory.
“I did lose a friend that got shot," he told the crowd on Saturday. WHNT asked Lampkin for the name of his friend who died inside the club. He answered that he had only known each other for a short time and didn't remember the victim's name.
“You don’t want to think that anyone would take advantage of the situation, and quite honestly, I don’t know whether he did or not," says James Robinson, the CEO of Free2Be and organizer of the Rocket City Pride Memorial Service.
Robinson says he's also fielded calls from individuals who claim Lampkin's story isn't true.
“I don’t know anything about Clint. He’s not affiliated with Free2Be and he’s not one of the planned speakers at the Rocket City Pride Memorial," Robinson says.
WHNT left a message with the FBI Field Office in Tampa to see if they could confirm that he was inside the club on the night of the shooting.
