Former Army Maj. Richard Fierro served three tours in Iraq and one tour in Afghanistan throughout his service in the military. But he never expected to use that training while at home, especially not while he was enjoying a night out with his family.
Fierro was celebrating a birthday and watching a drag show at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colorado, with his wife, daughter, and his daughter’s boyfriend on Saturday night when gunshots rang out in the club just before midnight. The Army veteran hit the ground as soon as he heard the shots, looking around to identify where the attack was coming from.
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“I was in [fighting] mode, I was doing what I did down range. I trained for this,” Fierro told CNN, describing the moment he located the shooter across the club. “I ran across the room … pulled him down.”
After the shooter, identified as Anderson Lee Aldrich, was knocked to the ground, Fierro and a man named Thomas James subdued him and pushed the gun out of his reach, he said. Fierro then discovered the gunman also had a pistol, which the Army veteran seized and used to hit the attacker.
“I found a crease between his armor and his head, and I just started whaling away with his gun,” Fierro said. “I told him while I was hitting him, ‘I’m going to f***ing kill you, man, because you tried to kill my friends.’ My family was in there, my little girl was in there.”
One of the drag queens who was performing that night also jumped in to help, beginning to kick the attacker, who was on the ground, according to Fierro.
“She helped kick him with the high heels that she had on,” Fierro said.
Aldrich was detained at 12:02 a.m., two minutes after the first police officer arrived on the scene and three minutes after the officers were dispatched.
Fierro was one of several patrons at Club Q on Saturday night when the gunman entered the building and began his attack, leaving five dead and 17 people injured. Among those killed was 22-year-old Raymond Green Vance, the boyfriend of Fierro’s daughter.
“Raymond was a kind, selfless young adult with his entire life ahead of him,” Vance’s family said in a statement. “His closest friend describes him as gifted, one-of-a-kind, and willing to go out of his way to help anyone.”
Aldrich remains hospitalized as of Monday and is in police custody. He faces five counts of first-degree murder after deliberation and five counts of bias-motivated crimes that caused bodily injury, according to Colorado’s KDVR station.
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Not much is known about the shooter’s past, although it has been reported that Aldrich previously changed his identity when he was younger due to ruthless bullying as a child, according to the Colorado Springs Gazette. Until he was 15 years old, Aldrich went by the name Nicholas Brink, later changing his name after becoming the target of intense cyberbullying, according to the Washington Post.
It’s not clear whether those events influenced Aldrich’s attack at Club Q, as police are still determining a motive.
