Lessons: The winner will be the one who follows his training, who has the cool courage to protect the flock in the face of almost certain death, and who focuses on the tasks that must be performed to achieve the life-saving goal.
As gunfights so often happen, it began as a day like any other day for Andrew Brown, a USAF Security Policeman at Fairchild Air Force Base in Spokane, Washington. It was June 20, 1994, and he had gone on duty at 1400 hours, or 2:00 PM Pacific Time. Andy was working bicycle patrol on base, carrying the standard sidearm the United States Air Force got before the rest of the armed services: the Beretta Model 92F, designated by the military as the M9 service pistol. It was loaded with standard issue NATO military ammunition, a 124 grain full metal jacket bullet at slightly greater than P pressure.
The Beretta M9 was not new to him. This particular specimen was, though. His usual duty gun had been tagged for "routine maintenance" and had gone into the armorers' system. His issue gun this day was an identical M9, but one he had never fired before. He trusted the Beretta system to function, but was aware he had not sighted in this particular weapon now hanging at his side, and did not know where it would actually hit, point of aim vis-a-vis point of impact.
He didn't spend much time worrying about it. After all, he had never had to fire his weapon in the line of duty in the five years he had served as an SP. He had taken his responsibilities seriously, and had shot Expert nearly every time he had qualified with the M9. Unable to take the issue weapon home, he had bought the closest clone gun he could afford, the similar Taurus PT-92, to practice with. But there was no reason to believe he would need to make a precision shot with the newly issued M9 he had never fired. Not today ...
The Situation
Unknown to Brown or anyone else, a human cancer had been growing that was about to metastasize suddenly and violently. The malignant tumor was named Dean Mellberg. He was 20 years old. He had slipped in under the radar of USAF recruiting. Diagnosed as having mental problems in Basic and in USAF Tech School, he had for some reason not been discharged despite some serious problems with a roommate. Mellberg tended to watch TV in the dorm room while standing at attention, and at last, after masturbating in front of others, was diagnosed by psychologists at Fairchild as needing a discharge. Before he left, Mellberg had managed to access his medical records and expunge them, Brown would learn later.
Leaving the service, Mellberg emptied his $6,000 savings account and bought a semiautomatic MAK-90 clone of an AK47 rifle and a 75-round drum magazine, and returned to Spokane. He hired a taxi to drive him to the Air Force hospital complex, which was located just barely off base. The toxicology screen that accompanied his autopsy later would show that Mellberg was not under the influence of either drugs or alcohol--only madness.
He entered the hospital annex with the weapon in a styrofoam case, loaded it in a men's room and then came out shooting. The first to fall was a psychologist. He moved through the annex and the parking lot to the main building, firing as he went.
Before it was over, Mellberg would shoot 27 people, killing five.
The Alert
On bike patrol for just an hour, Andy Brown was at the Gate Shack when the call came in: shots fired, "man with a gun" at the Emergency Room. As he got on the bicycle and began to pedal as rapidly as his legs would carry him, Brown thought for an instant that it might be just a drill.
But in moments, he realized the drivers of cars streaming past him in the opposite direction as he rode toward "the sound of the guns" were shouting desperately at him. They passed each other so fast he couldn't make out the words, but he caught the gist of the message. As he got closer to the hospital annex, he saw people running away on foot. They weren't going by so fast that he couldn't hear. They were pointing behind them and screaming, "man with a gun," and about then, Andy Brown could hear the shots.
And now, as his bike brings him to the front of the hospital annex building, he sees a man in the street holding a rifle, firing from the hip, left-handed. He appears to be shooting at the houses on one side of the street, and the hospital on the other. Brown can see a woman lying motionless on the ground behind the gunman.
As he comes to a stop, dumps the bike, and draws the M9 pistol he has never actually fired, everything begins to go into slow motion for Air Policeman Andrew Brown.
The Death Battle
As the bicycle clatters to the ground, Brown--caught in the open, with no cover, not even concealment--drops into a kneeling position as he raises his gun. He takes the position as the USAF Marksmanship Training Unit has taught him, a "marksman's kneeling," the pistol in his right hand supported by his left, and his left elbow resting just forward of his flexed left knee. He yells in command voice, "Police! Drop it! Put it down!"
The words are to no avail. The man is coming toward him. He is firing the rifle at Brown. Andy is cognizant of this, but for now, his training takes over, and he aims his newly issued Beretta, takes a sight picture, and focuses on the front sight. He draws the trigger back double action for the first shot, exactly as he has been taught. The pistol discharges.
But the murderer is still moving toward him, firing. The witnesses will see it, but Andy is only dimly aware of it, because he is focusing on his task: to put a bullet into this man that will stop the danger. Still focused on the front sight, he presses the trigger again, but still there is no effect visible downrange: the man with the gun continues to come at him, shooting.
Brown presses the trigger a third time. Again, no reaction: the killer is still moving forward with his high-powered rifle, at a distance that appears to be 30 or so yards. Now, doubt begins to creep into Andy Brown's mind: "Am I missing? Are my bullets not doing anything to him?"
But the training overrides the doubts, and even as those thoughts go through Andy Brown's head, his right index finger presses the Beretta's trigger smoothly to the rear a fourth time as his eyes focus on the front sight.
Like the other shots he has already fired, this fourth one is almost inaudible to him. But at the moment of this last discharge of the Beretta, he sees a dramatic reaction downrange. The man spins violently away from Andy's gunfire, his feet going visibly up in the air, and he falls to the ground on his back.
The gunman is no longer active.
Andy Brown stops shooting.
Carefully keeping his gun on target he stands, and moves to cover--a phone pole and a big metal transformer he hasn't seen as he pulled in. He will later want to kick himself for being so tunneled on the threat he didn't spot that cover, that close, to hide behind when he could have used it. As his vision widens, he can see a truck giving him a better piece of tactical cover with better visual perspective, and he quickly moves to there.
Brown is processing all this at the moment, thinking "tunnel vision," and realizes he hasn't checked for any additional adversaries. He does so now. His scan reveals no further threats.
Only now, reasonably certain the immediate deadly danger is over, does Brown lower his Beretta. He decocks the weapon, as he has been taught.
Short Term Aftermath
The man with the MAK-90 was down and done, but there was no way Andy Brown or the other cops there could know that. They still had to check for other armed murderers, and they still had to try to help the victims.
They were short of personnel. In minutes, Andy Brown's Beretta was back in his hand as he helped search and secure the area. The M9 had one round in the chamber, de-cocked, and ten more left in the magazine. He knew that, because he checked it when they gave it back. No one had ever taught him to perform a tactical reload, so he left it like that. The guns were issued to Air Police that way, he remembers: two fifteen round magazines, one to be kept in a belt pouch, and one to load and chamber with, no "top-off" of round count provided for.
Brown was ordered back to secure an outside perimeter, but there weren't enough armed personnel to search and stabilize the hospital area, so he was brought back in to the shooting scene. Beretta in hand, he moved through the scene, and experienced a moment that has haunted him ever since. Coming through the cafeteria/kitchen area of the hospital, his foot slid into a large pool of slippery blood. It was the blood of an eight-year-old girl who had been murdered by the man Andy had shot down minutes before.
Shooting Reconstruction
As he fired the shots that stopped the murders, Andy Brown perceived his opponent to be perhaps 30 yards away from him. At the same time, hard-focused on his front sight, he was aware that his human target seemed incongruously tiny.
The investigating authority was the Spokane County, Washington Sheriff's department. Their investigation showed conclusively that USAF Security Policeman Andrew Brown had been between 69 and 71 yards away from Dean Mellberg when Brown fired the fourth and final shot, stopping the mass murder. Investigators and newsmen alike split the difference and called it 70 yards.
Unquestionably, it was the last 9mm bullet fired by Brown that ended Mellberg's killing spree. However, it was not his only hit. Though Mellberg had shown no reaction to it, he had been hit before then by one of Brown's first three shots. Typical of full metal jacket, pointy-nose 9mm ball ammunition, the hit had created what pathologists sometimes call an "adynamic wound." That is, a wound that did not stop activity, and did not contribute to cause of death.
This first bullet, according to the autopsy, hit Mellberg's left shoulder just above the armpit and simply went in and out. The autopsy report described it as "track of the missile through skin, subcutaneous fat, deltoid muscle, subcutaneous fat, to exit." It is not surprising that Brown, on the shooting end of that, saw no reaction from his opponent.
The shot that stopped the killing was proof of the long-standing conviction that shot placement is more important than anything else in terms of "stopping" a homicidal aggressor. The bullet Andy Brown fired that ended the murder spree entered just to the right of Mellberg's nose, almost dead center "between the eyes," and tracked down to exit the upper neck at the juncture of the rear curvature of the skull.
It appears the wound track missed the deep brain, the pons and the medulla oblongata, but tore through the upper brain. As Brown's shot exited, it sucked out with it in its vapor-wake any cognitive thought the depraved murderer might have had, and along with it any ability to harm innocent people. As is common with profound injuries to the upper brain, it apparently triggered what neurologists colloquially call "an electrical storm in the nervous system," causing muscles to "fire" and activate violently. This is associated with frequent reports of men shot in the upper brain who appear to "stiffen up and topple over like a tree": the anti-gravity muscles in the legs are stronger than the flexor muscles of the legs, causing this effect.
At the moment Andy Brown fired the shot killing Dean Mellberg, the latter's forward-moving posture would be consistent with bent legs. The sudden, involuntary straightening of those bent legs at the moment Brown's bullet tore through his murderous brain would be consistent with the "electrical storm in the central nervous system" effect, accounting for the witnesses including Brown seeing the killer appear to jump up in the air and spin before he fell to the ground, motionless.
Long Term Aftermath
People who say "There's no such thing as post shooting trauma" usually haven't been in a shooting in the United States, and experienced the aftermath that includes influence of the press and of a public clueless about what really happens in gunfights.
At the scene, Brown felt he had not done enough. It was as if he hadn't gotten there in time. Cognitively, he knew then and knows now there was no way he could have gotten there sooner to interdict the threat, and no one could have stopped it faster than he did under the circumstances. What haunts him most is the memory of those he was unable to protect: those who died, and who were shot and wounded, before he could get there. What haunts him most is stepping in the blood of the eight-year-old child who died before he could arrive to stop her killer.
Appropriately, Brown received awards for his courageous actions. He accepted them modestly. What bothered him was something that police psychologist Walter Gorski had long before termed "Mark of Cain Syndrome": the sense of your identity as the good guy, the good cop, the good whatever, has been consumed by your new identity splattered all over the newspapers as "He Who Killed." Brown remembers, "I had young cops come up to me and say they wished they had been the ones to do it, it was a great thing." He discovered he was being described to other people to whom he hadn't yet been introduced as, "The guy who killed the killer."
Says Brown, "The USAF encouraged me to relocate. I spent three years in Hawaii as a USAF criminal investigator, then a year in New Mexico." By then, he had decided to get out. He relocated in the Pacific Northwest, and now serves in the law enforcement realm as a dispatcher.
There came a time, after the shooting, when he felt badly enough about not having been able to be there in time to stop all the killing, he thought it would be a good idea to take his government employer up on the offer to speak to a psychologist. As soon as he did, he was relieved of his fully empowered status and disarmed of his issued weapon.
And, yes, that left a very bitter taste in his mouth. Even after getting a "clean bill of health" and being reinstated and re-armed, Andy Brown came to realize those he served did not care about him, as much as he had cared about those he had sworn an oath to serve and protect, on pain of his very life. In the end, that's why he chose to leave the street side and go to another side of law enforcement, where he serves with distinction today.
Says Andy now, "I got out when after five years and two new assignments, I was still known as 'The guy from Fairchild that shot that dude.' The everyday stress of law enforcement was getting harder to handle. The adrenaline of a traffic stop would make my voice quake and my hands tremble, like a rookie. Suspects lying to me in interviews would make me so angry I would have to leave the room. I got out to take a break from law enforcement, seek anonymity, and yes, get away from a system that didn't truly care about me. I also got out because I wanted to be able to seek counseling without, in my view, being punished for it."
Lessons
There are those who will tell you pistols are short-range weapons, and it is indefensible to fire them at distances as far as 70 yards at armed and violent perpetrators. That's bullshit. Andy Brown's experience is a classic example.
There are those who will tell you you can't hit an opponent 70 yards away if you're only armed with a pistol. That's bullshit, too. On a June afternoon in 1994, Andy Brown proved it, firing a Beretta 9mm issue pistol he had never fired before. The witnesses confirmed at the moment of truth Mellberg, age 20, was firing at Brown, then 24, with a rifle as Brown simultaneously returned fire with a pistol. Mellberg missed Brown. Brown hit Mellberg with 50-percent of his gunfire and killed him where he stood. End of story.
When you are the one who is under fire--and, more important as I read Andy Brown's perceptions, when help less innocent people are under fire and you have sworn an oath to protect them--"minimum" training and practice is not enough. Andy Brown had taken his oath so seriously he bought the closest gun he could afford to the relatively expensive Government-issue Beretta, simply to practice with on his own time, at his own expense. Anyone who doubts this dedication on the part of this individual member of the United States Air Force to serve those within the mantle of protection went above and beyond the call of duty, is probably too clueless to enter a discussion of the matter.
Even the staunchest advocates of un-aimed "point shooting" agree at longer distances, the sights must be used if you expect to deliver a fight-stopping hit with a handgun. Andy Brown did so, and proved the validity of "focus on your front sight" as the tactic that will win such a fight.
Andy's experience highlights a fundamental principle of surviving any life-threatening experience: focus on the task, not the goal. Seeing a deadly, well-armed killer shooting at him 70 yards away, a distance he perceived as half that or even closer, Andy didn't think "Oh, my God, I gotta somehow survive!" No, he thought about focusing on his front sight and carefully pressed his trigger straight back, and he hit his opponent with two out of four shots at a distance many would consider "out of range" ... and he killed the killer and stopped the mass murders. Starting with a 75-round magazine in his rifle, Mellberg had already shot 27 people at the time Andy Brown stopped him with a bullet literally between the eyes. Andy remembers now, "There were 19 rounds left in his gun at the time he went down. It made me feel good I stopped him before he took any more victims."
Bottom Line
You can hear Andy Brown talk about it himself on Episode 033 of the ProArms Podcast, downloadable from iTunes, Zune, or http://proarms.podbean.com. He graciously allowed us to tape and broadcast it when he took an LFI-I class (where he shot damn well, by the way). Andy is licensed of course to carry a gun, and does so. A tall man with long fingers, he finds a SIG P226 9mm to conceal adequately for him, and to fit his hand better than the M9 he used in the service.
You might find it useful to hear him speak of that day in his own words. I for one consider Andy Brown to be a genuine American hero. So, I suspect, will you after you hear his story.
All of us fantasize about being a genuine American hero. But only someone like Andy Brown can tell you how much it might cost.
COPYRIGHT 2010 Publishers' Development Corporation
COPYRIGHT 2010 Gale, Cengage Learning
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