Richard Fierro, an Army veteran, said he “went into combat mode” when a gunman opened fire Saturday night inside an LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, Colo., killing five.
In an interview with The New York Times published Monday, Fierro, who left the Army in 2013, said he was watching a drag show at Club Q with his wife, daughter and friends when the first shots rang out. He says he confronted the gunman as he saw him head toward the patio area, where patrons fled when the shooting began.
Fierro, 45, said that he ran across the room, grabbed the gunman by a handle of the body armor that he was wearing, pulled him down and jumped on top of him.
“Was he shooting at the time? Was he about to shoot? I don’t know,” Fierro, whose account reportedly matches with that of other witnesses and security footage, told the Times. “I just knew I had to take him down.”
Fierro added that he grabbed a pistol the gunman was carrying and started to hit him in the head with it repeatedly, asking for other patrons to help him subdue the suspect as a man grabbed the rifle used in the shooting and moved it out of the suspect’s grasp, while a drag dancer repeatedly stomped on the man.
“I don’t know exactly what I did, I just went into combat mode,” Fierro told the Times. “I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us.”
Fierro, who was covered in blood after the altercation, said that he was initially detained by authorities and spent an hour handcuffed inside a police vehicle, pleading to be let go so he could check on his family members.
Authorities have named Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, as the lone suspect in Saturday’s massacre. On Monday, he was hit with five murder charges and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime that caused injury.
Authorities said that Aldrich, who was taken to a nearby medical facility for the injuries he sustained, was also arrested last year for making multiple threats toward his mother.