‘It’s the reflex’: Veteran helped disarm gunman at gay club
COLORADO SPRINGS, COLO.>> When army veteran Rich Fierro realized a gunman was spraying bullets inside the club where he had gathered with friends and family, instincts from his military training immediately kicked in.
First he ducked to avoid any potential incoming fire, then he moved to try to disarm the shooter.
“It’s the reflex. Go! Go to the fire. Stop the action. Stop the activity. Don’t let no one get hurt. I tried to bring everybody back,” he said Monday outside his home in Colorado Springs, where an American flag hung from the porch.
Fierro is one of two people police are crediting with saving lives by subduing a 22-year-old man armed with multiple firearms, including an AR-15-style semiautomatic rifle, who went on a shooting rampage Saturday night at Club Q, a wellknown gathering place for the LGBTQ community in Colorado Springs. Five people were killed and at least 17 wounded.
Fierro was there with his daughter Kassy, her boyfriend and several other friends to see a drag show and celebrate a birthday. He said it was one of the group’s most enjoyable nights. That suddenly changed when the shots rang out and Kassy’s boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance, was fatally shot.
Speaking to reporters at his home Monday, Fierro teared up as he recalled Raymond smiling and dancing before the shooting started.
Fierro could smell the cordite from the ammunition, saw the flashes and dove, pushing his friend down before falling backwards. Looking up from the floor, Fierro saw the shooter’s body armor and the crowd that had fled to the club’s patio. Moving toward the attacker, Fierro grasped the body armor, yanked the shooter down while yelling at another patron, Thomas James, to move the rifle out of reach.
James is a U.S. Navy information systems technician stationed at the Defense Intelligence Agency base in Colorado Springs, according to a biography released by the Navy. The Navy statement Tuesday said James is in stable condition, without elaborating on the nature of his wounds.
As the shooter was pinned under a barrage of punches from Fierro and kicks to the head from James, he tried to reach for his pistol. Fierro grabbed it and used it as a bludgeon.
“I tried to finish him,” he said.
When a clubgoer ran by in heels, Fierro told her to kick the gunman. She stuffed her high-heeled shoe in the attacker’s face, Fierro said. Del Lusional, a drag queen who performed at Club Q on Saturday night, said on Twitter that the patron who intervened with her heel was a transgender woman.
“I love them,” Fierro said of the city’s LGBTQ community. “I have nothing but love.”
Fierro served three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan as a field artillery officer and left the Army as a major in 2013, an army spokesperson said.
He noted he had dealt with violence. That’s what he signed up for. “Nobody in that club asked to do this,” he said, but everyone “is going to have to live with it now.”