A retired 15-year Army veteran helped take down the Club Q mass shooter in Colorado Springs and did so with a sense of humility and purpose to help good people survive when faced with "evil."
"I kind of wanted to tell the people in there, 'Hey man, if your kid or your friend or whoever it was that was in there, somebody cared enough to do something,' and everybody in there was doing something, so everybody cares," Richard Fierro told Newsmax's "Rob Schmitt Tonight" on Tuesday.
"I just want to make sure that those families know that this is about survival. Everybody was in there trying to survive."
Fierro told his heroic story in full to The New York Times, describing how he jumped the man "easily more than 300 pounds" with another man and repeatedly pummeled the shooter in the face until he was bloodied and knocked out, originally thinking he has killed him.
Fierro was less inclined to share the details when appearing with host Rob Schmitt.
"I really don't want to take these families through this every time I talk about it," he said. "Bottom line is there was a lot of heroes in there, all of us. We're one family at that point. Regardless of what's going on, it's about staying alive and getting out of there.
"We all saw evil and nobody wants to see that, ever."
When Fierro saw his chance, after hitting the floor and helping his friends and family to stay down, his Army instincts kicked in and he rushed the shooter from behind, bringing him to the ground.
"He was across the room by the time I oriented myself and I ran across and engaged," he said. "I mean, I'm a soldier. I'm not a great soldier. There are just better soldiers than me. Plenty.
"I just did my job at that point to protect my family and protect my friends and you do it."
Colorado Springs Mayor John Suthers hailed Fierro as a hero.
"In my opinion, he saved a lot of lives," Suthers told The Gazette. "I have never encountered a person who engaged in such heroic actions so humbly."
He and another man, Thomas James, brought the shooter to the ground and pummeled him, shouting obscenities and instructions for others to jump in the fight, Fierro told the Times.
"We pulled him down and pinned him down and just started going at it," he recounted to Schmitt before growing uncomfortable about sharing the details again. "I don't have to explain it. It's not anything anybody should ever have to do."
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Eric Mack ✉
Eric Mack has been a writer and editor at Newsmax since 2016. He is a 1998 Syracuse University journalism graduate and a New York Press Association award-winning writer.
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