‘Family left in ruins’ after 36-year-old Southwest attendant dies of COVID, mom says

When Maurice “Reggie” Shepperson drove himself to a Las Vegas hospital after falling ill, he had so much trouble breathing that he crashed into a curb in the parking lot.

“He couldn’t breathe, and he was out of it,” his mother, Dawn Shepperson-Bernard, told The Las Vegas Review-Journal. Her son died on a ventilator of COVID-19 on Aug. 10 after spending just over a month in the hospital.

“It hurt me so bad because it was just so quick,” Shepperson-Bernard told USA Today. “This is mind-blowing. It’s not real. It’s not real. It’s not real.”

Shepperson, who was fully vaccinated, had taken every precaution against COVID-19 while on the job as a Southwest Airlines flight attendant, friend Marcia Hildreth told the publication.

But he fell ill following a vacation trip to Hawaii with his mother, The Las Vegas Review-Journal reported. “He was so sick he couldn’t get up,” Shepperson-Bernard said.

Like all vaccines, COVID-19 vaccines don’t provide 100% immunity from the virus but they do dramatically reduce the severity of the illness. Fewer than .004% of vaccinated people with COVID-19 require hospitalization and fewer than .001% die, CNN reported.

“It shows how quick life can change,” Shepperson-Bernard told The Las Vegas Review-Journal. “How you can build a life for yourself and how quickly your life can just be taken away. Everything that you worked for, so hard, it can just basically be left in ruins. Your family left in ruins.”

Southwest Airlines issued a statement saying it was “heartbroken” over Shepperson’s death.

“I’m going to miss my friend,” Hildreth told USA Today, recalling that his brightly colored pants earned Shepperson the nickname “Skittles” during flight attendant training.

More than 99% of recent COVID-19 deaths in the United States have involved people who are not vaccinated against the virus, NPR reported.

More than 207 million cases of COVID-19 have been confirmed worldwide with more than 4 million deaths as of Aug. 16, according to Johns Hopkins University. The United States has more than 36 million confirmed cases with more than 621, 000 deaths.

This story was originally published August 16, 2021 at 9:03 AM with the headline "‘Family left in ruins’ after 36-year-old Southwest attendant dies of COVID, mom says."