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

Rich Fierro heroically helped disarm and subdue a mass shooter who killed five people at Club Q in Colorado Springs, Colo., last year

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.

“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).

“Everybody is like, oh, you're here, you saved lives. I go, no, we lost five. We didn't save five people. And those five people mattered,” an emotional Fierro told Hall. “People were shot. Their lives are changed forever.”

Related: Army Veteran and Drag Performer Among the Heroes Who Stopped Club Q Gunman: 'I Was Done with War'

Fierro, who served 15 years in the military including three tours in Iraq and one in Afghanistan, said the sense of guilt has been a “mental strain.”

“There's a sense of did I do enough? Right? Am I … did I shortchange somebody?” he said. “And so I think that is what that PTSD thing is, is it's more about guilt that you didn't do enough.”

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The gunman behind the Club Q shooting was sentenced to five consecutive life sentences in June after pleading guilty to five counts of murder and 46 counts of attempted murder for each person who was in the club at the time of the shooting, according to The Associated Press.

When the killer was sentenced, Fierro said he was allowed to read him a letter — one he took nearly a month to write because he wanted to get it right. “I said, you are a coward, that I have zero respect for you,” Fierro told Hall, adding that he told the killer “he was worse than the terrorist that I fought” during his years in the military.

Beyond the closure of the sentencing, Fierro said he’s been focused on improving his mental health through therapy, medication and physical therapies such as massage and acupuncture. In addition to his new interview on Hall’s podcast, Fierro has also spoken out a number of times in the media about the importance of mental health management.

“Nobody wants to talk about it,” he told Hall. “And that's the reason I've been very open about it.

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