One of the challenges of writing this column is that I sometimes find myself intruding on a serviceman’s darkest day, asking him to recall events he’d rather forget. That was certainly the case when I spoke to Andy Brown, whom I told you about back in April after I’d watched him talk about his book Warnings Unheeded.
Senior Airman Brown was an Air Force security officer on bike patrol at Fairchild Air Force Base on June 20, 1994. He’d stopped to visit a friend and enjoy the air conditioning at a guard shack when the call came over his radio, “Fairchild Police to all posts and patrols, we have an alarm at the ER. Informational, we have an individual in the hospital running around with a shotgun.”
This report was in error. The gunman was actually armed with a MAK-90, a Chinese version of the Russian AK-47, equipped with a 75-round drum.
Brown jumped on his bike to ride the three-tenths of a mile toward the hospital. He rode fast, but not as fast as possible because he had no description of the shooter, didn’t know the gunman’s precise location, and wanted to be able to scan the area for danger effectively.
As he sped toward the scene, others hurried away. People in fleeing cars shouted to warn him. He couldn’t understand them due to the adrenaline rush. A military dump truck drove away with people sheltering in the bucket and even standing on the steps outside the doors.
Brown scanned a crowd of people for weapons as he neared the hospital. “Where is he?” he yelled. They pointed, and by then he could hear the gunfire but couldn’t tell where the shots were coming from.
Finally, Brown spotted the killer swinging his weapon to the left and right, firing even though Brown couldn’t see anyone in the shooter’s line of fire.
Brown slowed and jumped off his bike, his momentum carrying him forward as he drew his 9 mm Beretta. He dropped down on his right knee, sitting back on his right foot with his left elbow on his raised left knee. Hyper-focused on his target, he failed to notice various nearby opportunities for cover.
Brown hesitated before firing. He saw people scurrying around cars, one person laying in the road behind the shooter. They could be hurt if he missed.
“Police! Drop your weapon!” Brown shouted. The gunman pointed the rifle in Brown’s direction and fired. In a strange way, being shot at was a relief to Brown because it meant the danger of not shooting outweighed the danger that Brown might accidentally hit a bystander.
The distance between Brown and the shooter was over 200 feet, pretty far for a handgun shot. Fortunately, Brown often practiced shooting.
He fired one shot. The gunman’s behavior didn’t change. (Later, he’d discover his first round had gone through the shooter’s shoulder.) A second and third shot. Nothing.
Brown had literally experienced nightmares in which firing on a dangerous criminal had no effect. Now the dream had become reality.
But the fourth round was a head shot. The shooter jumped up, spun around, and landed on his back, motionless. Brown speculates the round passing through the shooter’s brain sparked nerves that made the legs jump. “It was shocking,” Brown told me. “It was like Hollywood, so unrealistic.”
Senior Airman Andy Brown stopped the gunman with a difficult shot, while the shooter still had 19 rounds. Brown’s actions saved many lives. Yet he never comes close to bragging. He’s spent too much of the last 28 years in a futile effort to make people forget about him and what he did. In his fascinatingly detailed book Warnings Unheeded and in his conversation with me, he was focused on those who helped get others to safety, on medical first responders, and on the four killed and 22 wounded on that most terrible day.
Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.
