APD sergeant recalls warehouse shooting

Mayor honors first responders at ceremony

Albuquerque police Sgt. Brian Pitzer was about an hour into his shift when an “active shooter” was reported at a Ben E. Keith warehouse in an adjacent area command.

It was the first time Pitzer — who has been with APD for 12 years — had responded to such a shooting, though he said he had played the scenario out in his mind many times.

Police use the term “active shooter” to describe a situation where someone is actively killing or trying to kill people in a popular area, such as a school or workplace. It calls for a different police response than a drive-by shooting or other violent scenarios.

For Pitzer and the officers under his command, it was straight down Gibson SE to the food distribution center in the 3200 block of Broadway. They were among the first officers on scene.

One person was shot and injured in the parking lot. Pitzer and his team quickly went into the facility through a south door.

“In an active shooter situation, that’s what we do. We go in and we want to distract the gunman from hurting innocent people and focus his attention on us as quickly as possible,” Pitzer said. “If you are the first on scene … you are going in. That’s part of the job. Your job, for example if it’s a school, is to distract him from hurting innocent children. Or, in this case, innocent coworkers. Our job is basically to go in and stop the threat.”

Once inside, the officers started making their way through the massive complex.

In an upstairs office, two employees were found shot and badly injured. The officers didn’t know where the shooter was or whether he still posed a threat to others.

Pitzer called for officers to drag the victims to safety.

“When I saw (one) victim … I thought he had either already passed away or was very close. The amount of blood and the look that he had was not good, and I knew we had to get him out right then and there or he was going to die. There was no time to wait, so I made the decision to drag those individuals out,” Pitzer said. “It was my understanding that we still had a gunman lose inside the building. But in that case, you just have to exercise good judgment.”

The decision to get the victims help, as opposed to continuing to search for the shooter, proved to be the right one. All three shooting victims were treated at University of New Mexico Hospital and are expected to survive. Police haven’t identified them.

The shooter, Waid Anthony Melton, 30, had already fled the building by the time police entered. He killed himself later that night.

Pitzer recalled thinking about such a situation many times.

“Mental preparation goes a long way with how you’ll perform game day,” he said.

Pitzer, along with dozens of other officers and firefighters, and other first-responders, were recognized at a ceremony on Wednesday held by Mayor Tim Keller.

Police Chief Michael Geier said the victims of the shooting were saved thanks to the quick thinking of his police officers and others who responded to the scene.

“The first line of defense for those people was the first few minutes,” Geier said. “They survived because of that.”