Richard Fierro, a US Army veteran, is being credited as the hero of the Colorado Springs shooting at an LGBTQ club ‘Club Q’. Police Chief Adrian Vasquez on Monday said that the 45-year-old and Thomas James stopped the shooter Anderson Lee Aldrich.
Who is Richard Fierro?
Richard Fierro is 15-year army veteran and co-owner of a local brewery. He is 45 years old.
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He spent four four combat deployments across Iraq and Afghanistan.
“I had my whole Colorado Springs family in there. I had to do something: He was not going to kill my family,” Fierro told The Washington Post.
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The 45-year-old told The New York Times he was at the Club Q drag show Saturday with his wife, daughter, and some friends.
Fierro’s wife, Jess, wrote on Facebook that her husband had bruised his right side and injured his hands, knees and ankle while apprehending the gunman. “He was covered in blood,” she wrote on Atrevida Beer Co.’s Facebook.
“I grabbed the gun out of his hand and just started hitting him in the head, over and over,” Fierro told the Times.
I just know I have to kill this guy before he kills us,” he added.
“I just want people to take care of people, the people who are hurt and no longer with us. I still got two of my best friends who are in the hospital. They still need prayers; they still need support,” he told the Washington Post.
Before police revealed the names of the men who subdued the shooter, Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers said the men had “heroically intervened.”
“We praise those individuals who did so because their actions saved lives,” he wrote in a Sunday statement.
Aldrich was being held on murder and hate crime charges Monday The attack killed five people and left 17 others with gunshot wounds.
