Hero with PTSD wonders if he did enough

Army Veteran Who Disarmed the Club Q Mass Shooter Opens Up About PTSD: 'Did I Do Enough?'

PEOPLE
By Sean Neumann
Published on December 14, 2023

“There's a guilt,” Fierro explained to Hall, as the two discussed #PTSD and its impact on their lives. (Hall was wounded during the war in Ukraine while working for Fox News.)

Rich Fierro, the Army veteran who helped disarm a mass shooter who opened fire at a gay nightclub in Colorado last year, is speaking out about the post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms he’s been managing in the year since the shooting that killed five people and injured 17 others.

In a new interview with Fox News war reporter Benjamin Hall on his Searching for Heroes podcast, Fierro, 46, recounts the harrowing night of Nov. 19, 2022, when a gunman entered Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo., and opened fire and how it has impacted both his and his family’s life.

The victims included his daughter’s longtime boyfriend Raymond Green Vance, who died in the attack, as well as bartenders Derrick Rump and Daniel Aston, as well as Kelly Loving and Ashley Paugh.

Fierro, who along with fellow patron Thomas James helped subdue the gunman and pinned him down for roughly six minutes until police arrived, has been regarded as a hero for his immediate response to the massacre. But Fierro has also spoken out over the past year, most recently on Hall’s podcast, about his lingering sense that despite his heroism, he didn't do enough.
read more here