WARNINGS UNHEEDED-Andy Brown

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response to both tragedies when the warnings go unheeded. Have you ever heard somebody say that a tragedy struck without warning? On June twentieth, nineteen ninety four, a former airman sought vengeance with a rifle at the Fairchild Air Force Base Hospital. Four days later, a rogue pilot crashed to B fifty two outside a Fairchild's nuclear weapons storage area. Both tragedies had been predicted and repeatedly warned about. Warnings unheeded is a rare look inside the troubled mind of a would

be active shooter. It is an exclusive look at a talented pilot whose dangerous flying prompted air crews to refuse to fly with him. Is a look at the leadership culture that allowed both men to travel unchecked on the pathway toward destruction. This unique true crime book reads like a suspense novel, densely packed with details garnered from medical records, police reports, and first hand accounts obtained from journal entries, letters,

witness statements, and personal interviews. These empowering stories detailed the heroic response to the tragedies, the events that lead up to them, the precursors of violence and disaster, and the

traumatic aftermath. Written by Andy Brown, the man who ended the hospital killing spree, Brown's narrative focused mainly on others, including heroic life saving actions of hospital patrons and staff, but he also describes the preparations he made which enabled him to win a pistol versus rifle gunfight, as well as his own experience with the effects of trauma. The book that were featuring this evening, his warnings unheeded Twin Tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base with my special guest,

author and former starf staff Sergeant Andy Brown. Welcome to the program, Andy Brown.

also had a fascination with firearms. So I eventually decided that I wanted to become a law enforcement officer, and right out of high school, they didn't have any career paths and you couldn't become a police officer in a civilian life. So I joined the Air Force and with the intent of going into the security police, the Air

Force's military police career field. So at the age of nineteen, I joined the Air Force and went through basic training, and my first duty station was in Mountain Home, Idaho, which I kind of wanted to see the world, and the deserts of Idaho weren't exactly my cup of tea, so I put in for an overseas tour and went over to Greece. I spent three years there and then ended up at Fairchild Air Force Base. But I enjoyed

the career. I enjoyed law enforcement. However, I didn't think that the training that we received was adequate enough, especially when it came to firearms. I took the job very seriously and knew that there might come a time where I would encounter a lethal force situation, and I wanted to be as prepared for that as I could be.

And we only fired our duty weapons, the Barretta M nine twice a year, and so as soon as I could, I bought my own handgun it was a clone of the Barretta, and practiced with it as often as I could, and just so that I could have the the best

marksmanship skills as possible. Outside of the train at the Air Force gave me, and I also wanted to work on my officer safety and my mindset, so I read a lot of books on tactics and such, and one of the things that I found most useful, especially in the incident that we're going to talk about, was mental rehearsal, where every night before I went to bed, I would envision a different lethal force encounter that I that I might experience someday, and I would practice what specific steps

I would take as far as seeking cover and and getting my site alignment with my handgun, and and just visually practice those those events so that if I ever did encounter them, it would be like it wasn't the first time that I was experiencing it, and I would be able to just go on instinct and be able to automatically react to the situation in front of me. A lot of people made fun of me for that.

They thought I was being paranoid, and with the different tactics that I would practice, they thought I was gonna go on overboard. But there were some who who, like me, took the job as seriously as as they would possibly could, just so that we would be ready, just in case, we were called upon not only to save our own lives,

but to save the lives of others. I've made a commitment to myself that if I was ever in that situation and somebody's life was in danger, I didn't do all that I could to protect them, that I wouldn't be able to live with myself.

long range bomber. But fair Child, like most air Force bases, had a long history of putting on air shows. Most of your air shows, they're mostly filled with a single engine jet fighters that are more maneuverable and can perform aerobatics. But a fair Child had a history of trying to use their heavy aircraft the size of an airliner in

the air shows and performing aerobatics with those aircraft. They developed an air show stunt team with their heavy aircraft, and it resulted in a crash, a fatal crash, and that was in nineteen eighty seven, so they kind of stepped away from that and stopped that program. Within a few years after, they kind of forgot the lessons that they learned that tragedy and started allowing the B fifty two specifically to fly in some very dangerous aerobatic maneuvers

that were crowd pleasers. It was very impressive, but it was also very dangerous if you knew anything about the handling capabilities of that airplane.

The hospital, we had a full size hospital on the base, but this particular at this particular base, the hospital was located just outside the perimeter fence and it was surrounded by two military housing areas on either side of it. It was a three story building and there was an annex building that used to be dormitory for the medical personnel. It had been converted to office spaces and one of the units in that annex building was the mental health facility.

But it had the full capabilities of any other hospital, just like you would see in the civilian world.

he didn't fit in. They would push him around in the hallways and verbally abuse him and trip him in the halls and knock his books out of his hand, that kind of a thing. Self proclaimed jock said that he was treated like any other nerd who wouldn't defend himself, So I guess you could say he was bullied, but he also kind of brought that treatment upon himself. He just acted very strangely, and he was accused of openly masturbating in classrooms and staring at girls while he was

doing it. There were people who tried to befriend him, and he just seemed to push them away through his behavior. One girl who took pity on him and tried to befriend him and be nice to him, he returned that favor by masturbating in class in front of her until she eventually just told him to leave her alone. And there were other kids who would be nice to him and befriend him, but he just always seemed to distance

himself from his peers by mistreating his his friends. He also had a mother who people say was very overbearing and very protective of him, which may have contributed to his lack of coping skills. Whenever something went wrong, she seemed to be able to She seemed to just step in and try to handle it for him and not

give him any life experience. Also, he had an interest in the military, and right after he graduated high school he joined the Air Force, and it seemed like that was going to be his escape where he could maybe get away from his mom's overbearingness and get a new start, start fresh, and make a good life for himself, it seemed,

but his behavior interfered with that as well. In basic training, he was pretty quickly identified as having mental health problems and was referred to the mental health facilities there at Basic Training, and they pretty quickly recommended he be discharged

from the military. He wasn't military material. He had very poor social skills and paranoid or personality disorders, and the basic training instructor agreed that yes, he shouldn't be in the military, he should be discharged, but it wasn't up to them, and it wasn't up to the doctors either. They could only make a recommendation, and the commander of his basic training squadron overruled the doctors and told his TI, his training instructor, to get him back in training and

let him graduate. Something similar happened at his tech school.

He was going to go to school to be a lab technician to calibrating electronics and other equipment and tools for the Air Force, and at his basic or at his tech school, he had problems with his roommates and he threatened to set one of his roommates on fire when it while he slept, told him he was going to douse him in lighter fluid and set him on fire, and that pretty quickly led to another referral to mental health, and I can only assume that they recommended his discharge

from the military as well, but for some reason, none of the records exist on that trip to mental health from his tech school, but several of the instructors there recommended that he be kicked out of the Air Force and they were overruled from the leadership gooul. They said, he's got good grades and he's going to graduate sooner enough, basically that it would be somebody else's problem. Let's just

graduate him and push him down the line. His first, very first duty station after tech school was Fairchild Air Force Base, and wasn't a very good performer in his laboratory. He could perform well on tests, but he had a hard time applying any of the skills that he learned in the real world, so he was very difficult to train. And again he had zero social skills. He didn't know how to talk to people. When he did speak, which wasn't very often, he would speak in a halting whisper.

So he had trouble at work, but also with his roommates. He went through several roommates and each one of them complained about him openly masturbating in front of them and their girlfriends. Just pretty really difficult person to live with.

So he was referred to mental health there at Fairchild, and again they recommended he'd be discharged from the military, but his commander at Fairchild thought that the Air Force just spent a lot of money training him, and that we need to get the money's worth out of him and give him a chance to adapt to military life. So they the commanders overruled the mental health recommendation to discharge him and kept him in the military.

expert shot with that. He after he was recommended referred to mental health, he developed a fixation on that and thought that just seeing the mental health doctors was going to be on his permanent record and ruin his military career. So he pretty much fixated on his roommate. Because the complaints from his roommate which led to his referral of mental health, he began to stalk that roommate, and he became so fixated on the roommate's complaint that his work

performance suffered even more. Was kind of a weird situation where if he'd just let that go, he was going to be allowed to stay in the military, and because his commander was given a second chance. But by that time he was so obsessed with the complaint that he pretty much let everything go as far as his work performance and just obsessed over his roommate's complaint to where

that led to another mental health referral. By that time, the doctors at Fairchild began to get the impression that he was a danger to himself or others, more so to him to others because of his fixation on the roommate, that they referred him to mental health hospital in Texas, where he spent ninety days on the psychiatric ward of Wilford Hall Medical Center. While he was there, he received

numerous diagnoses. The nurses there were afraid of him. He also exhibited his perverse behavior there right in front of all the other patients and doctors. It didn't seem to matter. Nothing could stop him from masturbating openly in front of whoever happened to be in the area, but they he was diagnosed with anxiety disorders and antisocial personality. A lot of the nurses thought that he was attending to internal stimuli or hearing voices. He would always just smile for

no apparent reason and or laugh to himself. He was diagnosed with organic mental disorder or obsessive compulsive disorder, and most notably was a paranoid personality disorder and psychosis. Pretty much all the doctors there agreed that he should be discharged from the military, but about that time, his mother flew down to San Antonio and began spending a lot of time on the ward during visiting hours and began

to interfere with his treatment. About the time that he had accepted the fact that yes, he should get out of the Air Force, when she showed up, he began to fight his discharge again, and they enlisted the help of their congressman from Michigan, and when he made a

congressional inquiry. Congressional inquiries in the military really get people spun up, and there's a lot of speculation that just the inquiry made by the congressman made the people in the Air Force problem go away by allowing him to stay in the military. So he was discharged from that inpatient psychiatric ward and allowed to be stationed at another Air Force base in New Mexico.

to the atrocities of the Holocaust. So these people were stunned that this reasonably intelligent guy exhibited this kind of disturbance, and they tried. It seems amazing how many people tried to talk him out of this, and then each time that they realized that there was this person had a serious mental illness that could not be abated. He refused meds, he refused any kind of therapy, so they wanted to

discharge them. So it's amazing all the efforts and all the people you talk about, specifically the doctors that make reports that he is especially concerned with, and as you put in the book, he writes in his journal afterwards about his interpretation or his feelings about that meeting with those doctors. So can you tell us about doctor Brigham and his meeting with Melburgh.

as determining that Melburgh was a danger. He specifically put in the medical records that followed him to the psychiatric ward that they consider this patient dangerous, But not too many of the other doctors seemed to pick up on that as much as doctor Brigham did. He Doctor Brigham could see that that he was a threat and did all he could to make the other doctors realize that so that they could get him discharged from the Air Force. But it didn't didn't seem to happen.

the military. They they felt that he was maybe having an episode of brief reactive psychosis, but they weren't couldn't really pursue that very thoroughly there at Fairchild because they didn't have an impatient psychiatry section or award there.

at Fairchild. Tell us a little bit about those efforts to try to get him sent somewhere else and as a result what happens.

they would have initiated some discharge paperwork. But instead of being returned to Fairchild from that psychiatric board, he was given orders first to Mountain Home Air Force Base, which was my first dutious climate. But people got word that that they were sending him there, and somebody from Mountain Home happened to be visiting Fairchild and stopped by the the laboratory and got the first hand scoop of of what they were going to be dealing with if they

did get if Melburgh was assigned to their station. So they pulled some strings and got his orders changed, and that's how he ended up at the base in New Mexico and Dean Mehlberg. One of the things that he one of the things that he had a problem with with doctor Brigham and doctor London. He's he because he

realized that his orders got changed. He was under the impression that they were the two doctors were calling around and spreading rumors about him and ruining his career at the base that he was going to be stationed at. He felt like he was going to be showing up there and people were going to be aware that he was a problem, and he specific he blamed those two

doctors for that. He wrote in his journal entry that they were that basically, these doctors are conspiring against him to destroy his military career, when it wasn't the doctors at all. It was individual from Mountain Homes Laboratory happened to know somebody at Fairchild's lab and just got the the inside scoop from them directly.

quite a bit. When he was discharged from the psychiatric ward, he spent some time there at Lackland Air Force Base while he was waiting to get his new orders, and he met a girl who he considered his girlfriend and they did have a relationship, but he was would make comments to her like somebody had had done him wrong and he was going to pay them back, and that the police would have to be called, and that the police would would have to take him down, and that

he was going to go out with a bang. He basically was already laying out his plans to seek revenge and it seemed like violence was was the method that he was going to take. There was also an instance, yeah, when he was stationed in the new base in New

Mexico after the psychiatric ward. He was in Cannon Air Force based New Mexico and pretty quickly ran into some trouble there that led to an encounter with the security police, the law enforcement and he basically as soon as he was brought into an interview room to be questioned about a denign incident. He shut down and was in a basically a catatonic state, just staring at the wall. Prior to that, he seemed to be already practicing an act

of workplace violence. It seemed like he was doing a dry run of walking through his laboratory with a large equipment case that was about the size and shape of a rifle, and he walked through the laboratory there holding that case at hip level like it was a rifle,

and acted out a workplace shooting. There was an individual there who had already been warning his co workers and leadership that he felt that Melburg was going to commit an active workplace violence and even went so far as to get permission to not allow him to practice any further with them sixteen rifle. They canceled his weapons qualification

because he felt he was such a threat. Wow, And shortly after that incident he was referred to mental health and they pretty quickly got him discharged from the Air Force.

It seemed like he thought his career was going to be saved again, so he didn't really have any backup plans. So then when he was discharged, it was quite a shock to him. And he hung around there in the small town of Cannon or Clovis, New Mexico for a few days, and he'd saved up quite a chunk of money. He didn't spend his money on anything, so he just had a large savings account and he withdrew all that cash and went on a bit of a spending spree.

He bought new sets of clothing and rented a limousine and tried to go out to some night clubs and such, but nobody would go with him. He was just by himself. He was such an odd person though, that he didn't even take the price tags off of his new clothes. But eventually he ended up going back to the hospital at Lackland Air Force Base where he was in the psychiatric ward, and he went and spoke to a psychologist that he seemed to have a good relationship with and

was on a bit of a fact finding mission. He was specifically asking whether or not anybody at Fairchild Air Force Base had requested any copies of his records and whether or not Wilfrid Hall Medical Center had released any of his medical records. And he was basically trying to see if the doctors at Fairchild were spreading any rumors about him. And it seemed from there, based on the answers that he got, he determined that there's that Fairchild

were still spreading rumors. It was unfounded, but it appears that that's where he determined that he needed to go back to fair Child to seek revenge.

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com slash murder No Andy. We talked about all the circumstances and the confluence of events and his deteriorating mental health of Dean Mehlberg. It's interesting you write about how he spends a lot of this money on some dancers in a strip club, and he goes into a private room and tells us dancer is story of his life. And then, as you we mentioned just before this break that he's heading for vengeance to Fairchild Force base tell us what happens next.

staying in a billeting on Elmendorf Air Force Base. Builleting is like the hotel of the military, and then it Nobody really knows what he did up there, but we do know that right before he flew back to Spokane, Washington, the mental health clinic at Fairchild got a phone call all from somebody asking if doctor London was still stationed there,

and when they answered an affirmative. Later that evening, Melbourne caught a plane back to Spokane and he was spotted on the base and a lot of people were afraid of him and were alarmed that they did see him, that people were seeing him on the base, that he had returned there. But a lot of people also didn't believe the people who were reporting that they had seen him. They thought that they must have been mistaken because why

would he come back to Fairchild Air Force Base. He's kicked out, but military has no business being back there. But there's some evidence that shows that he went out to the hospital and was in the mental health facility, almost like he was planning and preparing his attack. He also purchased a rifle while he was there in Spokane.

He spent about a week in Spokane, and like you said, he was blowing large chunks of money at a strip club downtown, and he bought a mac ninety rifle, which is a type of an AK forty seven, and he also purchased a seventy five round drum magazine. Also, when doctor Brigham had sent Melburgh down to the psychiatric ward in Texas, he was so alarmed about his behavior and about what he believed he could do that he warned his wife and he loaded an heirloom rifle and a

shotgun and started keeping loaded guns around his house. He definitely knew that that Melburgh was a threat. He just couldn't communicate that to the other doctors and the other leadership in the Air Force. So Albert spent about a week there in Spokane, and on a Monday, he took a cab out to fair Child Air Force Base, and like I said, the hospital was located outside of the perimeter fence, so he didn't need to pass through any

entry control to get to the hospital. Even if he did, though he had been given a Transition Assistants ID card, he could have slipped right through the entry control the gate,

but as it turned out, he didn't need to. He just took a cab up to the hospital, and he had his rifle and the magazine in a large gym bag, and he got out of the cab and walked through the main hospital, went through the lobby there and then exited and walked across the parking lot to the annex building and it went into a bathroom inside the hospital annex, not too far from the mental health facility, and he went inside of a bathroom stall and assembled the rifle

and magazine. He then emerged from the bathroom there and began walking down a hall with the loaded rifle and came upon doctor London's office and pushed open the door and shot the doctor in the chest. He then immediately stepped back out in the hallway and walked two doors down to doctor Brigham's office and again kicked his door

open and shot that doctor in the chest. He then fired a shot down the hallway at people who had begun fleeing at this time, and then exited the annex out into the parking lot and pretty much anybody he could see as he made his way over to the main hospital. He entered the hospital and into the lobby, which also doubled as the pharmacy waiting room, where there's quite a few men, women and children waiting for prescriptions. And he just continued firing and pretty much fired NonStop,

indiscriminately as he was moving through the hospital. It moved down the hallways and passed the er and into a shot clinic, and there were some people who Nobody was allowed to carry firearms on the military base other than on duty law enforcement officers. There were quite a few off duty policemen and other hospital personnel who wished they had been carrying firearms, but even though they were unarmed,

they did put up right. One individual in the shot clinic heard the gunfire coming down the hallway and he tucked his daughter underneath a chair and stood on that chair near the door, and as the gunman entered, the pushed through the threshold of that door. This sergeant jumped down and grabbed the barrel of the rifle and began

struggling for control of it. But by then the gunman had fired so many rounds that the barrel was quite hot and it burned that sergeant's hands as he struggled with him, and pushed him out into the hallway and then shut the door. And as happens quite often, when these active killers are confronted, they usually seek easier targets,

and that's what Melbert did. As soon as he encountered some resistance, he turned and moved down the hallway and left the shot clinic pretty much unscathed, and pretty much everybody in the shot clinic there was able to escape out windows and seek safety and shelter in the housing area. Melbourgh moved down the hallway, retracing his steps, and continued firing and wounded several people. He went back out to the hospital lobby and shot several people second a second time.

It happened so quickly that some people fled and jumped out windows, and some people locked themselves in offices, but some people just dropped where they were, hoping to make themselves a less easy target, but some of the women who were shot in the lobby when he entered the first time were shot a second time as he passed

through the lobby again. He moved down a hallway to his family practice, continuing to fire, and by that time several people had run through the halls alerting people what was going on, so the hospital was pretty much was under an evacuation just from verbal warnings that had gone through the halls. As he approached the pediatric clinic, another individual put up a fight. Sergeant Root heard the gun fire and ran to a set of fire doors and pulled them closed and put his shoulder against him to

hold them closed. As the gunman was banging on the doors trying to gain entry to the pediatric clinic, Sergeant Root was yelling to his coworkers to evacuate, to take the parents and the children and get out of the pediatrics clinic, and so nobody was injured in that in

the pediatric clinic thanks to Sergeant Roots actions. The gunman gave up trying to gain entry into the pediatrics clinic and moved down another hallway, pursuing people as they fled out into the parking lot, and once outside Once he was in the parking lot, he fired at people as

they were hiding behind cars and scrambling into ditches. He then made his way out to the road that ran in front of the hospital, and he pretty much was firing at anything that drew his attention, and as a car drove by, he fired upon that vehicle and then started walking down the road back toward the hospital annex.

I had been on a swing shift. I was still a patrolman, but I was in a kind of a newly implemented program that we had was bike patrol, So instead of being in a motorized patrol car, I was riding a bicycle that day. And my shift had started at two o'clock and the incident the shooting started at about three o'clock, and I had already patrolled most of the housing areas on the base the back gate to patrol the housing areas that were on either side of

the hospital. I had made it out to the back gate and was taking advantage of the air conditioning that was in the gate shack and visiting for a moment with the gate guard there when the call came over the radio. When the shooting began, there was quite a few people that made it to telephones. This was back in nineteen ninety four that cell phones were not a very prevalent thing, so most of the calls to the law enforcement desk and to nine point one came from

landline telephones. But within about a minute there were several calls that had come into the law enforcement desk, and the desk sergeant imediately put out a call that there was an individual at the hospital with a shotgun. The people who had initially called in misidentified the weapon as a shotgun, but it still got the patrols headed that way. So when I heard that there was an individual firing off rounds at the hospital, I'd jumped on my bike

and began riding toward the hospital. It was about three tenths of a mile away on a straight two lane road that led right to the hospital from the back gate. I remember seeing several vehicles driving toward me as I made my way toward the hospital. There quite a few of them had rolled their windows down and were yelling at me, trying to get my attention and let me

know what was happening at the hospital. But I remember there was a sense of calm that came over me as I'd got the call, and also I began to experience some auditory excluie usion where my mind was so focused on the response and what I might do when I get there, that the world kind of went quiet around me. I couldn't understand what these people were saying when they were driving past me, but I knew that

there was trouble ahead, so I just kept writing. I didn't stop to try to figure out what they were saying. There was also a military dump truck that had stopped at the hospital and allowed several people to climb aboard, and as it rode past me, there were several people in the dump bed and hanging off the sides of the passenger door, and they were all screaming down at me and waving and yelling at me, trying to get my attention. But again I couldn't understand what they were saying,

so I just kept writing. The first building that you come to as you reached the hospital compound is the medical annex with a health clinic was located. And as I approached that building, as I neared it and it came into view, there was a large crowd of people that were moving toward me. In the street. They were all wearing some were wearing military uniforms, some were in hospital whites, and some were in civilian clothes. And at

that time there wasn't a description of the gunman. I didn't know who exactly I was looking for, so I scanned that crowd for a threat, and when I didn't see when I rode through the crowd. And as I was driving through the crowd, I yelled out, where is he? And several people pointed behind themselves and they collectively yelled, there's a man over there. He's got a gun and he's shooting people. So I rode through the crowd, and about that time I began to hear gunfire, but I

couldn't see exactly where it was coming from. The sound was revertading off of the hospital buildings to my right in the military housing areas to my left, which was behind the perimeter fence. I rode further, and by that time I saw the gunman in the street. He was dressed in dark clothing and was holding a long gun at his hip, and he was firing to his left

and to his right. So I immediately veered to my right and rode up onto a sidewalk and dumped my bike and drew my bretta and went into a kneeling position and yelled at him to drop his weapon. I remember seeing people behind him in my line of fire. They were scrambling to try to get behind cars and behind cover and into the ditches. And I didn't feel very comfortable making that a shot. Right at that time, I was worried that some of my rhymes might endanger

other lives. I know now that if you responded to an active shooter that there's no need to give him a verbal warning. But I didn't know one hundred percent that he had already killed or shot so many people. And I also was, like I say, concerned about firing when there were people behind him. My command to drop the weapon was ignored, and he continued to fire. He was left and right. I yelled again, and he swung his rifle in my direction and began to fire. So

I returned fire. I fired in succession as quickly as I could develop a site picture and pull the trigger and reacquire that site picture. I'd pulled the trigger again. It was four rounds in controlled secession. The first three rounds didn't have any effect on him. And I was concerned that I was missing him. I didn't know how far away he was at the time, but I know that I had a hard time seeing him behind the front post sight of my pistol. His upper body was

nearly obscured behind the steel front sight. But on the fourth round he jumped up in the air and spun around and landed flat on his back. There was witnesses in the area. They were hiding under cars and some were in the hospital. Anex looking out the window that say that he fired repeatedly in my direction and that he seemed to react to it. If not my first round, one of my first three rounds, he seemed to react as if he was struck in the shoulder, but it

didn't stop his behavior at all. But that fourth round hit him on the bridge of the nose and passed through his brain and caused him to leap up into the air and land flat on his back, and he didn't move after that. As soon as he was down, I stood up and started moving towards cover. The last position of cover between me and the gunman was a pickup truck, a civilian pickup that was parked alongside the road, and I reached that pick up and covered him with my weapon as I waited for backup.

than one gunman and of shots being fired. He continued to come into the to the law enforcement desks several minutes after he had already been shot. In that the

and the hospital was swarmed with law enforcement officers. Where who would have heard gunshots if they're in the area, But still they Some of the people on the scene were reporting that shots have been fired in the housing area, and shots have been fired here, and that there was a sniper on the third floor of the annex, just because of so many different reports and descriptions of the gunman that came in to the radio, to the law enforcement desk.

She recovered from her wounds, but the baby didn't make it, so there was a total of five lives lost and twenty two seriously wounded. The The death toll would have been quite a bit higher if it weren't for the actions of the men and women at the ninety second Medical Group. The only people who lost their lives suffered from what's been deemed as the unsurvivable wounds, but due to the quick actions and medical care, the first aid that was rendered by several of the members of the

hospital and civilians kept the death toll down. It would have been a lot higher had it not happened at the hospital, and a lot of those people risked their lives that they began rendering medical aid even as the gunman was still walking around firing.

was a narrative that was done. You describe what happens right after you are briefed about this event and your feelings about that tell us about that briefing and your feelings after you've made this, you've shot this perpetrator.

day become a a killer. But when you read the book and you see so many warning signs after warning sign, and then you get to the first media reports say that nobody could have predicted it, nobody could have seen it coming. It's very frustrating. But as far as as my reaction to the incidents, I suffered quite a bit of guilt.

ate away at me For quite a while. I didn't have an opportunity to talk to anybody and to seek mental health counseling so that I could process the incident and work through it and then eventually come to realize that I did do all that I could and that

I there's no reason to be second guessing myself. I did eventually come to that conclusion, but it took several years because whenever I would seek mental health counseling, I'd be relieved of duty and would no longer be able to carry my weapon and work patrol, which was a job that I loved, so discouraged me from seeking any mental health help until years later after I'd gotten out

of the Air Force. But yeah, I had never did experience any guilt from taking the gunman's life, because it's something that I had practiced for and prepared for, and it's pretty easy to justify taking a man's life when he's in the midst of ruining so many other people's lives. So thankfully I never experienced any guilt for that, and I did eventually finally come to terms with the fact

that so many people were killed and wounded. But I did do everything that I could, and I do realize now that I did save lives.

the killing. And I always that's one of the reasons why I beat myself up, because it felt like I took so long to get there, And I made several requests to get a copy of the audio tape from the law enforcement radio so that I could kind of get a timeline of how much time elapsed from the radio call that dispatched me there to my call that shots were fired and that the gunman was down. And it took me, I think probably fourteen years to finally get a copy of that, which is there's no excuse

for that, because it was readily available. It just people were dropping the ball and not allowing me access to it. But when I did finally get that audio tape, it was determined that it was less than two minutes from the first call for help to me radioing that the gunman was down. It's a two minute or less than two minute response time is pretty remarkable. So I began to forgive myself quite a bit for.

saying listen, this is dangerous. This guy should be reprimanded. Tell us what happens after this disaster at the hospital and then the idea of air shows and Bud Holland, tell us what happened.

coming upon his retirement. He was about to retire a few months after the shooting occurred at the hospital, and he had grown so reckless that a lot of vhrmen refused to fly with him. His crews didn't want to fly with him anymore because they risked They were afraid that he was going to end up killing them. And he was selected to perform in the air shows at least three years in a row, and his stunts. He would fly that huge jet fighter and eight engine aircraft

the size of an airliner. He would fly it like a single engine fighter. He would fly low and slow and do like turning around the control tower and bank the ring the wings ninety degrees when it was only a couple hundred feet off the ground and where I had zero lift. He would also rocket the airplane down the flight line at a low altitude and then pull up and gain several thousand feet of altitude in just a few seconds as he pitched the aircraft up eighty

degrees or more. That reckless flying that he did eventually caught up with him, and although several people were warning that he was going to kill somebody someday and that it would probably be at an air show where he might endanger the lives of all the spectators, they had warned about that, but the leadership failed to heed those warnings and allowed him to continue flying, and several people thought that the air show should be canceled after the

hospital shooting, but it was allowed to continue, and four days after the shooting, during an air show practice flight, Bud Holland banked the aircraft around the control tower and banked the wings ninety degrees and plummeted the plane into the ground and killed all four of the airmen on board.

it off. They were just waiting for it to go away, for the for the victims to pass away, because there were quite a few elderly people that were involved in the lawsuit. But so it took several years, but eventually they did come to a kind of like a plea

deal where they awarded the victims several million dollars. But when after the legal fees and having to split the settlement up between so many people, I'm sure it did little to make things right with the victims who are still living with life altering injuries to this day.

an other act of public mass murder. So there's still a lot that can be learned from this instant and others. But yeah, they did make some changes, like the hospital is now surrounded by a perimeter fence, but like I said, that wouldn't have stopped Melburg from getting on the base anyway because he had a temporary ID card.

time and you're doing something you really enjoy. And so at least in changes that were necessary for you after this incredible traumatic event, those changes have been made in your life, all positive changes, haven't they.

try to find the positive in all things. If my struggles with mental health led me to get out of the Air Force early, which was a very difficult decision because I loved my career, But if I hadn't gotten out of the Air Force, I wouldn't have met my wife and I wouldn't have the two kids that I do now, So I wouldn't have had the same life, and it may not have been as good of the life as I have now. So there are some good, good positives for the individuals in this if you seek,

if you look for it. But yeah, one lesson I would would pass on is if anybody is struggling with mental health is to never give up seeking help a lot of I've tried quite a few things that didn't help me or didn't help me very much, and just kept looking until finally I did find things that treatments and programs that that did work for me. Even though there was a time that I didn't think anything was going to help. Just got to keep keep looking and keep fighting for a greater mental health.

was a very cathartic process. And also having all the details and facts of the incidents in the book has helped others come to deal with it. I interviewed quite a few people who were involved in the incidents, and they've contacted me afterward and told me how helpful it was to know the whole story and to be able to read through it and re experience it in a safe environment to where it's kind of it's helpful to confront it and process it and work through it.

Warnings Unheeded twin tragedies at Fairchild Air Force Base. For those that might want to take a look at and maybe contact you. Do you have a Facebook page your website? How can I find out more about this book?