Atrevida Beer Company co-owner and Army veteran Rich Fierro is being hailed as a hero after he stopped the gunman during a mass shooting that left five dead and 19 injured at Colorado Springs-based Club Q on Saturday.
However, Fierro shunned the description, telling news outlets he was just doing what his years of military service trained him to do.
“I’m not a hero,” Fierro said during an interview on CNN Tuesday morning. “I’m just a guy that wanted to protect his kids and his wife.”
Fierro was at Club Q, one of few LGBTQ-dedicated establishments in Colorado Springs, to celebrate a friend’s birthday with his wife, Jessica Fierro, the co-owner and brewmaster ofAtrevida, their daughter and Atrevida brewer Kassy Fierro and her boyfriend, Raymond Green Vance.
Green Vance, 22, was one of the five people killed in the shooting. The other four people killed in the attack were Kelly Loving, Daniel Aston, Derrick Rump, and Ashley Paugh.
“My daughter is grieving the loss of her boyfriend,” Fierro said to CNN. “He was in our lives for six years.”
Fierro and another patron, Thomas James, tackled suspected gunman Anderson Lee Aldrich, 22, and separated him from his rifle. Fierro noticed Aldrich was also armed with a pistol, which he wrestled away from Aldrich and hit him with, according to CNN.
Formal charges have not been filed yet against Aldrich, who remains hospitalized, but he is facing five counts of first-degree murder and five charges of committing a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury, according to the Associated Press.
Fierro described his reaction to the mass shooting as the result of years of training and tours of duty. He added that he was concerned about the mental health of all clubgoers that night who had to witness what he called “combat” but “not to their own accord.”
“I’ve trained for this. I don’t want to ever do this. I didn’t even retire because I was done doing this stuff. It was too much,” he told CNN. “It came in handy and I got to protect my kid, but I lost my kid’s boyfriend. I tried. I tried to help everybody in there. I still feel bad that there’s five people that didn’t go home.”
Fierro injured his hands, knees and ankles during the altercation, and the Fierros’ daughter broke her knee, Jessica Fierro wrote on Atrevida’s social media accounts.
The Denver Post has compiled a list of verified fundraisers to support the families of the deceased and those who were injured.