As Fierro got up from the floor, he said, he saw the man with a gun.
“I looked across the room and the guy was standing at the door. I ran across the bar, grabbed the guy from the back and pulled him down and pinned him against the stairs,” he said.
Fierro weighs 300 pounds, but said the gunman was bigger, wearing body armor and carrying both a handgun and an AR-15 style rifle.
“He went for his weapon, and I grabbed his handgun,” Fierro said, but “his AR was right in front of him.”
Fierro said he started shouting orders to a young man who had stopped in front of the shooter to assist.
“I said ‘Kick him! Move the AR!’ Then I just started hitting him. But he was in armor plates, so I started hitting him wherever there was skin,” Fierro said. “The back of his head was my target.”
Fierro said he felt his military training kick in.
“I’m an officer and that’s what we do: I took control of the scene as best I could. I’m just hitting the guy with the pistol, beating the back of his head,” he recalled. “I’m yelling to people at the same time, ‘Call the police! Let’s go!’”
When the young man assisting him flagged, Fierro said he hailed a passing drag queen in high heels to help, shouting, “Kick him!”
“She kicked him because the other guy was tired,” he said.
By the time the first police officer arrived minutes later, Fierro said, “I was in the middle of a puddle of blood.”