Left Of Greg 084 Warnings Unheeded by Andy Brown

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Great thing is, I just poured another cup of coffee in the kitchen, well away from where I am right now.

I've got mine here, iced coffee, though. It's always this morning. All right, we'll go ahead and get started. Today's episode, for those of you who are listening, we're actually just recording this on July 28th, and we're kind of live streaming to Facebook. So if you haven't followed me, Brian, on Facebook, you guys go ahead and follow me along because we pop up on there live all the time. You guys can interact. But today, Greg and I are very honored to have on author, Air Force veteran, law enforcement veteran, a guy with a ton of experience, by the name of Andy Brown. Andy wrote the book called Warnings Unheeded, which we will get into shortly here. But you kind of found us through some other folks on Facebook and said, "Hey, I was involved and this is what I wrote about." And then we looked it up, we're like, immediately we're like, "Hey, you got to get on the podcast, man, and come talk about some of these experiences." So, I don't know, Greg, did you want to throw in something here at the beginning?

I think so. Just welcome to the show, Andy. Obviously, we're both huge fans and we want to have a great discussion today. But I also like to talk about string theory, superstring theory, the M-theory, and how things happen. So, like a week and a half ago, Marren and I are teaching down and conducting some investigations down in Denver, Colorado. And so, we're walking around, COVID aware, we come by the Wynkoop Brewery. So we have a beer at the Wynkoop before we head back to the hotel and discuss the day. So today I got a message from the Wynkoop. They just opened up their new brand of beer that they're brewing, and it's called "The Andy Brown." Until I thought that there is no way in the world. So I immediately wrote Marren a message saying, "Here we go again. This is going to be one of those things where our lives intertwine and we find all of these relative issues that we've encountered together, and we shall drink."

That's nice. Maybe I can get somebody to send me some of that beer.

Yeah, you should. Maybe somebody that lives in Colorado. You never know. Should at least get a discount on it. So, Andy, where are you joining us from today, just so everyone kind of knows?

I'm in the Spokane, Washington area.

Okay, so that you're up where there's a... we'll just say there's a lot going on near you right now.

That's on the other side of the mountain. It's practically a different state over there in Seattle. I'm in Eastern Washington.

Okay, good, good. So you're probably relatively safe where you're at and not near the masses of chaos.

And I like sticks, so I'm pretty much removed from anything.

Perfect. Well, we'll go ahead and jump in here and we kind of want to start out just by talking about the book you wrote. So you're an Air Force veteran, and then you wrote the book about some incidents that happened in about the mid-90s, back in '94 actually, while you were working as kind of security forces, security on an Air Force base. And one of the things that has happened which probably most people have never heard of is this B-52 crashed, right? Which is generally rare, right, that these things occur. It was a training accident, I guess you could say. And what you did in your book is one of the things you kind of documented everything that led up to this, which we found incredible because, you know, anytime a story happens or we see an incident, we always go, "Well, there's always more to it than you think. Let's wait for the investigation." So if you could, why don't you just kind of tell everyone and tell us about what happened with that incident and specifically with the pilot, this guy, Bud Holland?

Okay, sure. Yeah, in 1994, I was stationed at Fairchild Air Force Base, which is in the Spokane, Washington area. And during an airshow practice flight, a B-52 was doing a low-level, slow turn around the control tower and banked the wings incredibly far, 90 degrees, and plunged into the ground. And it was a tragic accident, but a lot of people had predicted that that pilot in particular was going to go down sooner or later based on his behavior. He had a history of pushing the limits of his aircraft. And the B-52, if you don't know, it's a huge aircraft. It's bigger than some airliners. It has like a 180-plus wing-foot wingspan. So it's like doing aerobatics in a jet liner, pretty much. And so, he would, over a period of at least three years, his routines and the way he flew the aircraft got increasingly more and more reckless to the point where people were refusing to even want to fly with him. The B-52 is a crew-served aircraft. There's at least four people on board: the pilot and co-pilot, navigator, and radar navigator and bombardier. And so, this was during an airshow practice flight, and the previous airshows Bud Holland would fly the aircraft low and slow down the flight line and then pull up sharp and just rocket into the air and do what they call the wing-over. When he would reach maximum altitude, right before he would stall or the aircraft would fall back on itself, he would turn and let the aircraft slice through the air so he could regain speed and then pull out of the dive essentially. And that was incredibly risky. Some people said if you do a wing-over in a B-52, you'll rip the tail off. So he did maneuvers like that, and he would also do low-altitude banks where he would bank the wings of the aircraft 90 degrees and then pull out right before a stall. And doing that at high altitude is pretty risky, but doing it 150, 200 feet off the ground is pretty much suicidal.

So, yeah, I just, real quick for everyone, because I know like Greg and I read the book, a lot of people—because you go into great detail about where this came from and how it started—and, you know, airshows are super popular in the U.S. You know, it's great for the military to kind of show off new toys, gadgets, tricks that they can do. It's fun for people to go watch, like if you've ever seen anything like that, it's super cool just to see all this stuff in action, right? And then now, typically, a B-52, like you said, this is a giant, big old bomber. I mean, since the Cold War, and like you said, picture almost like a 747 doing aerial acrobatics. It's not what it's designed for. And what, you know, you documented, and there's this guy was basically exceeding any recommendations or exceeding any limitations on what this aircraft could do. Is that kind of like that?

And I think it's more important too, Brian, is to understand that it's Colonel Bud Holland. And, yeah, this guy, it wasn't his first rodeo. So this pilot not only had been around, but he had been doing these maneuvers for quite some time, and everybody kind of knew the larger-than-life Bud Holland was up to something. He was going to do something. And I think, along with the title of the book, Andy, nobody did enough. Nobody did enough to stop what could have been prevented on that.

Absolutely. The lower-ranking officers and aircrewmen, they tried to do something, but they were pretty much helpless. Their hands were tied when they would complain to upper management. They would say like, "What are we going to do as a captain? You want to go and tell a lieutenant colonel that he can't fly the aircraft the way he wants to?" And also, for a person who pushed the safety limitations of the aircraft, Bud Holland was in an interesting position. He was the Chief of Standards and Evaluation (STAN/EVAL), which was the organization that was in charge of maintaining and enforcing safety regulations.

Standards and Evaluation. Folks that are listening and watching along, and here, the publications list clearly what can be done and what can't be done. And this wasn't, first of all, we're talking about a pilot, we're talking about here, we're talking about a veteran. We're not trying to disparage his name or his family name or anything else. We're saying that he took risks he shouldn't have been taking, and he did them with other people around. And thank God it wasn't in the middle of the airshow and he turned it into a lawn dart and plowed through the grandstands killing a bunch of folks. You know, that that could have been the outcome as well.

Yeah, absolutely. Where he ended up crashing, there would have been spectators had it not been a practice flight. If it would have occurred just a few days later at the actual airshow, there would have been a lot more casualties on the ground. But you bring up a good point: it was a huge aircraft. They call them heavies. They're not designed for aerobatics. They're not single-engine jet fighters. In fact, the Air Force regulations at the time prohibited heavy aircraft from participating in airshows. Even a straight and level flyby was discouraged. They were relegated to static display on the flight line during airshows. But Fairchild in particular had a history of using heavy aircraft in airshows without seeking approval because it wouldn't have been approved. But the leadership over a period of several years pretty much just turned a blind eye to it because of Lieutenant Colonel Holland's charm and just because he was a good old boy and was a good pilot, and I think they wanted to see what he could do with the aircraft and show what Fairchild and the B-52...

You know, we all see that in different areas, right? So, yeah, we're talking about specifically with a B-52 pilot in the Air Force, so military stuff, but this goes, and you know, we all have experiences with that guy or girl because this guy was trusted, obviously, who is leading. He was head of the Standards and Evaluation for that for that unit, or for that base, I believe, for that wing. And then, not only that, he was a like Vietnam combat veteran. He was a well-respected pilot, meaning he knew his aircraft. In fact, he knew how to push it past the aircraft limitations. And, you know, we get into that's no different than, you know, we always tell the story, you know, a guy out of the military coming back from a combat deployment and it's like, "Okay, I'm going to go buy a motorcycle." And they get on the motorcycle and, man, at first they hit that corner a little too fast and they get all those, you know, electrochemical neurotransmitters start kicking, that epinephrine, that dopamine, the cortisol, everything just starts going, right? They get that adrenaline dump and they, "Oh my God, I'm not going to make it." And then they make it out of that turn, and then now all of a sudden what? Like, "Oh, well, I made it out doing 40. The next time they hit that turn, it's going to be 45. And then the next time it's going to be 50." And eventually, you know, that new baseline gets set, and eventually in order to feel that thrill, in order to do that, I have to keep pushing it. Well, in this case, this guy, I mean, he's a B-52 pilot. It only has so much structural integrity before you're going to push it past its limitations. And you know what you documented so well in that book was a lot of the different incidents even here where someone did say, "Hey, like, we got to do something about this," or, "Hey, this is unsafe." Or, well, and then someone comes in and goes, "Well, hey, you know, that's Bud. You know, he's been around. He flew missions in Vietnam. He's the good old boy like you said. We know he knows what he's doing, don't worry about it." And those are the people on the periphery there are the ones that they have some responsibility in this, you know what I'm saying? So I, it was just interesting how you were able to kind of document all the all the ways that that occurred.

Yeah, in the book, there was a series of incidents where he demonstrated gross disregard for safety, and especially the safety of his crewmen. The two crew members that fly in the bottom of the aircraft, their radar navigator and navigator bombardier, they eject downward when they have to leave the aircraft. There's ejection seats on the plane, and the pilot and co-pilot eject up out of the top of the aircraft when a hatch blows. But the lower two crew members, they eject down and they need a minimum clearance. And he frequently flew below that clearance. So even if they did decide to try to get out of the airplane, they would never have made it. And there's a... what do you guys call it? An institutional amnesia?

Yeah, supposed to be institutional memory. Yeah, that's great. No, that's a good one. I'm an Air Force guy, too. Thank you.

There's...

That's so, Andy, prior to that, the comment in your book, Andy, one of the comments by a person that was evaluating, said he had the best hands of any pilot he'd ever flown with. And this guy knew more about the B-52 than anything. So what, and and that, what's in it for me? The so what of that incident is we're willing sometimes to accept that type of behavior because he is that good old boy. He is a hell of a pilot. He was a hell of a pilot all the way up until this incident.

Yeah, absolutely. There were quite a few people that said he was the best pilot in the Air Force. Even people who knew he was going to crash one day, they knew he was very skilled and talented, but they also knew he had lost his respect for safety. But, yeah, institutional amnesia. Prior to this incident, there was, at the time, Fairchild had B-52s and KC-135s, air refuelers. They're basically a jet liner that's designed for carrying a lot of fuel and refueling aircraft in the air. And there was an incident in '87, just a few years prior to this crash, where there was a B-52 and a KC-135 practicing for an airshow, and the KC-135 flew through the wake of a B-52 and crashed right near the flight line, right where a group of spectators would have been, had it not been a practice flight. And so the Air Force promised Congress after an investigation that they would never use heavy aircraft in an airshow again. But then they kind of forget the lessons from their history, and things like this happen again.

Yeah, no. And that's what, you know, we loved because you went in there and showed like, "Hey, this is all of these steps," or, "These are all the places where someone said something, reporting, we all should have known, these are all the pre-event indicators." Because, you know, it's one of those at the time when you only see one thing, right? Maybe, maybe one each, one incident on its own maybe meant nothing, right? Maybe it was just, "Oh, well, he went a little too far," or, "He pushed at this." But, but it's when you look at it over time, and that's what people forget, is, you know, what's happening with this guy over time. And what you do a great job in that book is you show like, "Oh, it started here, he started doing this, then it started to escalate to here, then it started to escalate to a flyover of his daughter's school, violating airspace in the local area airspace." And then, then it's, so he had a complete disregard. So, so when you see that over time, that trend line, it's escalating. That's the thing is like, it's not just staying flat like...

Oh, boundaries. Yeah, then we test our boundaries, then we push our boundaries. All clear warnings, all screaming at anybody that would have listened.

So that, you know, was, in that alone, incident of a loan, is worth an entire book. But what you also tied in together, which I love the way you did this, is that, you know, the big thing, you know, people kind of probably know you for, is actually just a few days before that crash, there was an even bigger incident involving an active shooter at this base that you were very much a part of ending. In fact, you personally put an end to that situation with an incredible pistol shot, which had it not been documented in an investigation, Andy, you've always been fighting, I would have said, "I don't think so, man. That doesn't sound, that sounds a little too out there." But because it has been documented of where it occurred and there was an official investigation, there's photos, it's like, "Okay, I'll give you that one." But, but that that's kind of what we, what we really wanted to jump in here with you about. So, I mean, tell us what happened, you know, on you're on duty one night as you're doing, you're you're part of the, basically, for everyone listening, you know, basically the police for the Air Force. You're you're an Air Force enlisted guy. Your job is police on an Air Force base. I mean, I guess that's the best analogy to use for everyone to understand. So that's your job, so you're security, right, from external security, but you also have like some internal policing things that you have to do. So, so tell us what happened on on that evening.

Okay, sure. Yep, I was in the Security Forces (Security Police), which is like a military police (MP) for the Air Force, right? And just to touch on the shot, I didn't believe it myself. He looked a lot closer at the time. I had to go and walk that distance from where I stood and where he fell and see it for myself. But, you know, it was pretty remarkable. Remarkable, I didn't even believe it myself. But, yes, on Friday was the day of the B-52 crash, and on that Monday, I was working a swing shift. It was a 2:00 p.m. to 10:00 p.m. shift, and I was on bike patrol. It was only my second day on bike patrol. I usually was a motorized patrolman, but it was a newly implemented program and I was one of the first at that base to ride bike patrol. Primarily, I was focused on housing areas. There were several housing areas on the base. This incident happened at the base hospital, which was just outside the perimeter fence, and the hospital was surrounded by two military housing areas. And I had finished patrolling inside the base housing and was headed out to the housing areas that were outside the hospital. And it was a warm June day, and I was hot, so I stopped at the back gate on my way out to sit in the air conditioning and visit with the gate guard for a little bit. And while I was in there, the radio call came over that said there was an individual in the hospital running around with a shotgun. Initially, people reported that he had a shotgun. It later turned out that he had an AK-47 variant with a 75-round drum magazine. So, when I got the radio call, I jumped on my bike and headed down toward the hospital. It was a straight two-lane road that led from the back gate to the hospital. And as I was driving, or pedaling, toward the hospital, several vehicles were fleeing the area. And people were yelling out their windows that there was an individual. Well, I don't know what they're yelling, because by then I'd already experienced some auditory exclusion. I was pretty much focused on just getting to the scene, but I could hear or see people yelling at me. And I didn't stop to figure out what they're saying, I just kept pedaling. As I got closer to the hospital, there was a crowd of people fleeing the area. They were wearing civilian clothes and hospital whites and Air Force uniforms. And I didn't have a description of the gunman, so I was asking, "Where is he?" And collectively the group pointed behind themselves and said, "There's a man over there, he's shooting people." So I got through the crowd, and by then I could hear the sound of gunfire. It was reverberating off of the hospital buildings to my right and the housing areas to my left. So I coasted up onto a sidewalk in front of a hospital annex, which was an old converted barracks building, and I dumped the bike and got down on one knee and drew my Beretta and yelled at the individual to drop the weapon, identified myself as a police officer. And he continued to fire to his left and to his right. I didn't see that he was shooting at anybody, but I could see people taking cover behind vehicles and in ditches on either side of him. Yelled at him again, and when he failed to drop the weapon, he fired or aimed in my direction. I returned fire, shot four rounds from a kneeling position, and two of the rounds hit him. One of them struck him between the eyes, and he jumped up, turned around, and fell flat on his back. And it was over from there.

It's so you have an incident where you have five dead, 22 wounded. And I want to make sure that we roll the tape back, just as justice goes here, Brian. Everybody, Andy, that's watching and listening right now is imagining that you're a bike patrol officer with what's the new bike patrol. You've got the skin-tight suit, you've got the lizard helmet, you know, with the tail on it, that you're carrying some ultracool weapon system, you got the fingerless gloves. Do you hear what I'm trying to say, all aerodynamic? You had the bike that I grew up with in Detroit called "the Rackety Boom." Okay? You were in a uniform. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And that's why you had to pull over and dick around with the air conditioning. And you had an M9 (Beretta) that if you grabbed the upper receiver and the lower receiver and did this, you could shake a bullet out of it because of the way the weapons that were issued back then. And you still are in the moment here 26 years later, as if it just happened to you, taking four shots at a guy that had fired, you know, 50-some shots. And I cannot imagine, first of all, the surprise. You must have just, I would have slammed the M9 down and raised my hand. I can't believe out of four shots you hit him twice, both of those in the head. But the other thing was, please, what were you thinking when you were in the air-conditioned shack and you were just dicking around and the last thing you did was check some doorknobs? Do you get what I'm trying to say? I mean, every incident I've ever had, every incident Brian's ever had, were the same thing. You're going Big Mac or Slurpee, you're thinking about something completely different. Did you ever in your mind imagine just before you got that call, just before you heard that radio traffic, that this would be a life-and-death situation two minutes away on a bike ride?

Not at that, at that time, no, not at all. I had practiced and rehearsed for incidents of lethal force, but I never even really considered an active shooter. This was well before Columbine, or any, even the term "active shooter" was coined. There was no training for it, and it wasn't really an anticipated event. I had considered, you know, having to use my weapon, but it was more of a one-on-one type situation that I would rehearse for, not an individual trying to shoot and kill multiple people in public.

Yeah, so I, I know it probably, I mean, it happened pretty quickly, right? You're riding up to the scene, you're on a bike, which all of a sudden, like, that had to feel, we've all had that, you're like, "Oh, man, I really wish I could had a vehicle or a wall or something." But here we go, right? So you're rolling up on that and then, you know, like you said, it's chaos. You just, everyone's at least directed you in the right direction, "Hey, someone's over there." You brought up a great, you know, point about this wasn't really something that was, I mean, you have training to engage people and take out threats and do different scenarios, but but this active shooter thing was not really a threat. And, and I'm sure at the time you're more thinking there's some external threat to the base, right, coming on versus someone already inside. But, but anyway, you, you know, you pull up, just to go over this, you know, it's chaotic, he's shooting, people are running, people are screaming. I've heard a lot of the 9-1-1 calls and some of the recordings and stuff. It's complete chaos. And then you kind of just happen to be in the right place where, "Oh, there he is. I got to get ready." And then, you know, did he even hear you at first or was it just you were kind of ready and then as soon as he looked at you and you knew it was on? Like, what, what was that kind of moment right there because you had to at least have locked eyes or seen right on them or something? I mean, were you, do, do you remember much about that at the time?

So, he had started shooting in the annex building that I was crouched right nearby. Inside there was the mental health clinic, and he went down the hall and shot the two doctors that he blamed for ruining his career. He was a former airman that was discharged for mental health reasons. Then he left that building and went through the main hospital, firing indiscriminately at men, women, and children. And then he chased a group outside the hospital and into the parking lot. And then he started walking down the road that I was on, and that's when I encountered him. He was walking down the road, firing to his left and right as he was pursuing the crowd that I had just ridden through. It ended up, it seemed a lot closer when I was engaging him and yelling at him. I don't think he heard me the first time. He didn't react. The second time, he definitely was honed in on me. And I think if I had been in a patrol car, he would have seen me and identified me as an armed responder more immediately. So I think having the bike might have been a benefit. I was able to kind of sneak in there on him. If I'd been in a patrol car, he probably would have lit it up before I had gotten out the door, or I might not have even heard him, I might have just rolled right up on top of him. But I didn't really see his facial expressions or anything. It ended up that the Sheriff's investigation determined that from his final rest, and from where they found my shell casings, that it was between 68 and 71 yards when I fired on him and dropped him. So as far as his facial expression, I don't know. There were individuals that were hiding...

Yeah, you kind of ruined that for everybody too, after shooting him in the head. That kind of changed that math.

Yeah, the nine mil at the Beretta. I liked it. It was a good gun, a little bit big as far as the grip went, but I think it was pretty accurate. When you say that I might have been surprised that I, that I even hit him with it, I was surprised that I didn't hit him with all four rounds, because I figured if I could see him, I could shoot him. And like I said, I thought he was a lot closer, so I was a little bit panicked after the third round that he didn't react, that I was like, "What the hell? Am I missing him? What's going on here?" And then I just kept lining up the sights and pulling the trigger. And he finally reacted to the fourth round, which must have been that, clearly it must have been the head shot. No, but there was people on the ground, hiding under cars, that said that he reacted to, if not my first shot, one of my first two shots, which hit him in the shoulder. They said he acted as if he was hit in the shoulder, but it was a superficial wound. It passed through and through. Back in the day, we had to use ball ammo, weren't allowed to have any hollow points, so unless you hit him right in the head, then it's not going to be an immediate stopping shot.

Well, I certainly don't want to steal any of the thunder from the book, and I highly encourage Brian, and I'm sure you do as well, everybody, to read this book, everybody that has a chance. But Dean Melberg (the shooter), there's a lot of water under the bridge, and he's what psychologically we call an injustice collector. And Dean, throughout his entire life, absolutely every incident that he compared to his fragile ego system, he took notes. And as in the book, you do an incredible job of cataloging his own diary. And I would tell you that if you've read the book, if you haven't read the book and you're going to read the book, and specifically, Andy, doing all the research you did, if you think his writing was mixed up, imagine what was going on in his head when he was trying to reconcile and communicate. And then every injustice that he collected. Listen, he didn't get discharged from Fairchild. He got discharged from a different base, but he knew he was coming back. He had made sure that he had put the guns in a bag, got into the cab, drove all the way back to exact his revenge on the people he felt wronged him. Now, the good thing about injustice collectors is if you've been trained to see one, if you know what it looks like, Brian, then you'll be able to seek them out and stop them. The bad thing was that other than a couple of postal incidents—and yes, there were bad incidents where people shot a bunch of people—there wasn't the type of human behavior pattern recognition analysis training going on in our nation during that period.

Yeah, so one of the things, yeah, we'll hop into this because this is what you get into the book is, you know, and that's the thing about especially with someone who's in the military, when you go in the military, everything is documented. I mean, almost every, like, you get evaluation from training, there's records, there's, I mean, that that's all, it has to get here, like basically what would be considered peer review. I mean, someone above that person has to go. So, so we'll, we'll get into this, but you, you did mention it, and I just want to hit it because that's a, Greg and I said the exact same thing that you actually just said. He said, "Same time, the fact that when I showed up on a bike is probably what saved me," because he was never, in his mind, at no point did he ever expect someone on a bicycle to show up. Right? You show up with flashing lights and coming in fast, and or a vehicle probably like, "Oh, that's an easy target," right? He's immediately going to see that and start engaging. But he probably never saw you until...

No file folder for "cop on bike."

So, so that's no different than what you see in different, like law enforcement stuff where they're stunned by something or they don't really react to something that they should because they don't have that file folder, we call it, right? They don't have that experience, that training, or that education that taught him, "Hey, this could also occur." So I mean, that that's, you, you hit it on the head there, we're like, "Yeah, I don't know, probably just didn't, didn't know that it was police showing up on a bicycle." So it's, it's incredible that just what we would think is, you know, "Man, I want a vehicle, I want to barricade, I want to be able to come up and and have all this with me." Well, that's what they're expecting. So you coming up by pure chance on this, swift, silent, deadly, I mean, really it gave you a tremendous tactical advantage. It really did.

Yeah, that's true.

What, what Greg, Greg kind of started jumping into it. So, so let's go ahead and start talking about this guy because he had so many documented issues, and you did a great job in the book. So what happened even with him in, in, in basic military training, right? Because you go all the way back to, I mean, you go all the way back to high school, folks. You got to read this book because you go back into how he acted in high school. You, it was interviews with teachers and fellow students and people in this community and they were already there and we're, you're, I'm reading them along going like, "Oh my God, this kid, if there isn't intervention immediately, like, immediately and strong intervention, this is going to get bad. It's going to escalate." But then he gets in the military and, and maybe, you know, talk a little bit about about this kid and, and kind of who he was and where he came from and what led to this.

Sure. And anything that we discussed today is not going to spoil the book because there are so many details in it that we won't be able to cover at all today. And just, I also just want to make sure that people know that I'm not a psychologist or psychiatrist and I'm not an aircraft expert, so I let all the experts speak in this book just by quoting them and interviewing them. I interject very little opinion of my own except toward the end in the afterward. But I knew enough to when I was investigating that what was important and needed to be put in the book for other people to analyze and make, draw their own conclusions. So, yes, he exhibited some odd behavior in high school that he could have been intervened upon. But when he did join the Air Force, he was in basic training and his drill instructor identified him as an individual that needed some psychological treatment and referred him to mental health. And they, after talking to him for a day or two, recommended his immediate discharge from the military. And if he was to stay in that, that he should not be allowed to handle weapons or work with nuclear weapons or anything like that, which pretty much made him ineligible to be in the Air Force because everybody works around things like that. But his commander, the commander of his basic training squadron, overruled that mental health recommendation. And that became a pattern throughout his, the rest of his career: at his tech school, and at Fairchild, and at the other base that he, that he went to. At his tech school, he had troubles with his roommates. He threatened to set one of his roommates on fire while he slept. And that led to him being seen by mental health. And his instructors in tech school recommended that he be discharged, and more than likely, so did mental health. But those records were lost because he had access to his medical records. He expunged a lot of the negative records from his personal file, so nobody was ever able to find that. But even though his instructors recommended he be discharged, the leadership at that school said he had good grades and he was going to graduate soon enough, so they just let him go and shipped him off to Fairchild Air Force Base. Where he again had trouble with his roommates and had some perverse sexual behavior that led to his roommates complaining, and he was referred to mental health. And they again recommended his discharge, and it was again overruled until he started to exhibit some violent behavior and the psychiatrist at Fairchild considered him dangerous and sent him to a military mental health facility in Texas. And he spent three months there and was diagnosed with a number of different diagnoses, like paranoia, schizophrenia, even some schizoid traits. And his discharge was recommended, but his mom flew down to the hospital and interfered with his treatment until somebody decided to just kind of keep him in and to appease the mom. And he was sent to another base in New Mexico. And so...

Real quick, yeah, and let me just jump in because like, I just want everyone listening or watching, know like these diagnoses that you're talking about are extremely serious. Like this isn't just, "Hey, you've got some post-traumatic stress or you've got some anxiety that you need to work on," or, "You have some, you know, you're socially a little awkward and need to develop some skills." Like this is way, way, way past that. These are very serious issues that he had, and what you see in a lot of these different cases, right? I mean, this happens in schools with kids all the time. I mean, it's just, "Okay, he's having some issues or she's having some issues, let's, let's just move them along. Let's, okay, well, let's, let's pass them off and they're going to go somewhere new and they're going to, and they just just kick the can down the road." So I just want to just break in there real quick just so everyone understands this is, there's another very serious...

Yeah, there's another part, too, Brian, I think you've touched on. One, this isn't happening very often in the Air Force, en masse, at large. You don't get a lot of people that are that are, you know, in and out of the psych office because they have a social abnormality or they're not performing up to speed. This is very rare, and here you've got the one player that keeps coming hot, you know, with the hot potato. The next thing is if you take a look at it, a lot of those leaders said, "Hey, look, we've invested thousands if not hundreds of thousands of dollars in this cat of training, you know, are we ready to tank him now? Do I have to put my signature on that?" And obviously, looking in hindsight, the answer is always yes. But Brian, it's not just a preponderance of evidence, it's the level of detail that he's talking about hurting himself and hurting others. And, you know, what what the mechanisms are, and we all know that that if you have that type of speech and you've discussed the mechanisms and then you have some portion of that stuff available to him, everybody said this guy was most likely to do this type of crime.

Yeah, and nobody was listening. And that, because that goes into everything and how it escalated and what was documented, because at first with some of the, I started reading some of the stuff and the way he was acting, I was like, "Well, I'm not going to lie, this sounds like half of the Marine Corps," but, trying to learn. But like, this was far beyond that, you know, what it was. And so, you know, again, and for those just kind of tuning in and watching, you're talking about this guy who, you know, started killing innocent people on this Air Force base back in the 90s, and all the pre-event indicators. So, you know, they, they're all so well documented. And that we always sit there and go, "Well, how did this, how did this happen then? You know, how did this actually occur?" Which is why you, you know, the perfect the name of your book, right, Warnings Unheeded. A lot of times people don't want to deal with these issues, or they don't want to, they don't necessarily know how or have the tools or, "Hey, I've got all these other things I got to do." And what they're failing to realize is that these aren't just little minute incidents, right? Every one of these is what we call a pre-event indicator. So, so you, if you look at them that way and go, "Hey, if this is a pre-event indicator, what is it a pre-event indicator for?" And you, it's very clearly to see, you go like, "This behavior is going to continue to escalate if it doesn't intervene." So I, I know it continued from there and I kind of just wanted to make sure everyone listening understood, you know, the seriousness of what this is. You're talking about this is now the, the very less than one percent of the, one-tenth of one percent of the population that needs very serious psychiatric intervention and help. Like, very serious mental health. Not, not talking the, "Hey, you got to go see someone and talk to them for a while." Like this is at a critical mass already. And now, go ahead, what they did, they just sent him to a different base, correct?

Sent him to a different base and didn't alert that base or his new commander of his history or what to look out for or anything. So, yeah, he repeated his behavior there. He had trouble with roommates. What he would do is he would masturbate in front of his roommate's girlfriends and just openly masturbate everywhere. And that, that's an odd behavior, but...

Well, not in this interview. Some of my friends' Facebook posts, right, Greg? Some of my friends on Facebook Live right now are going to be like, "I already know." They're like, "Wait, so that, that's a bad idea. Don't do that. Don't, you're telling me not to do that?" But anyway, continue.

Yeah, his behavior led to him being reported to mental health. What happened is he rode his bicycle across the golf course, and my compadres in the Security Forces went and apprehended him because the base commander happened to be on the golf course and thought maybe he was damaging the greens. So they did a quick investigation, realized that he didn't do any damage, and he was in an interview room and they said, "You're free to go." And he had just blanked out and was staring at the wall, catatonic, saying that he needed to speak to a lawyer. And they tried to convince him that he was not in trouble...

Oh, hang on a sec. That's the same call.

I tried to convince him that he wasn't in any trouble.

We usually get that. It's a fan going, "I'm watching you on Facebook." It's my stalker.

So, yeah, he was brought to the attention of mental health after that incident. And while he was being diagnosed and people are deciding what to do with him, his co-workers, he worked in a laboratory setting at Precision Measurement Equipment Laboratory (PMEL) where they calibrated all of the different tools and electronics from the Air Force. And several of his co-workers had diagnosed or determined that he was dangerous. They wouldn't even sit in a room with him, or if they were in a meeting, they would stand by the door because they were afraid that he was going to commit workplace violence. And he even did a dry run. He took a piece of equipment, or a case for equipment that was roughly the size and shape of a rifle, and walked through the entire lab like he was rehearsing a workplace violent shooting. And people were yelling and screaming that this guy's dangerous, but nobody was listening. Ultimately, their goal was just to get him out of the Air Force so he wouldn't be their problem anymore. There were some security police that encountered him during these times where they, they found him like in the middle of the night standing in a sprinkler outside of a building, staring like at the legal building where his lawyer was at. And they would take him into custody and try to provide care for him, but nobody knew what to do with him. The base emergency room couldn't help him, and off-base hospitals didn't have any psychiatric facilities. So they were pretty much at the end of their rope. They didn't know what else to do with him other than just let him go off base. So eventually he was discharged and returned from New Mexico to San Antonio, Texas, where he spoke to one of the psychiatrists that he was diagnosed or treated by when he was on the mental health psychiatric ward. And pretty much he confirmed with that psychiatrist that nobody else had. He was in fear that people were spreading rumors about him and accessing his medical records and sending them to other bases. He thought that the doctors at Fairchild had called the doctors at the base in New Mexico, or his bosses, and were spreading rumors about him, and that's why he was kicked out. And when he went to that psychiatrist in Texas and confirmed that nobody else had accessed his records, he knew then that it must have been the doctors at Fairchild, which it was a misconception, but in his mind, he had been wronged by them and was going to pay them back.

Andy, one thing right now, Andy, is that we've got HR people, first responders, law enforcement (LE), a dad, a mom that are listening on their drive back from lunch or they're tuning in on the Facebook Live. And one of the things that we try to help people with is, "Okay, so when can I do something?" And we call it the "Tac Freeze" – the tactical freeze. And I always ask people in the class, "If you had one bullet or one question or one set of flex cuffs or one phone call, could you have intervened at this point and done something?" Now, before you go on, I want everybody to understand this wasn't one incident. It wasn't isolated. It was cataloged and processed, and people played hot potato because it wasn't fun to deal with. But it wasn't just a chronic masturbation, it was the violence that was mentally checking out of situations. It was, you know, saluting Coke machines. It was bizarre behavior protracted over time. And what happened is that nobody really wants to dig down to the issue and call somebody and go, "Hey, I don't know what..." And we encourage you, call and call early, call often. If it's 9-1-1, if it's, you know, your supervisor, somebody else. Because what happens is afterwards we can piece this jigsaw puzzle together with a hundred percent certainty. But while it's going on, you only get a few pre-event indications, and if you don't take decisive action, it's going to lead to a scrum. It's going to lead to a bad situation with a lot of people laying dead on the deck, exactly as it has here. So, so was there something at this point compelling, because everybody, listen, remember, Andy's done thousands of interviews, thousands of hours of interviews. What was the most compelling thing you found before he shows up at Fairchild? What was it for you where you started putting the tea leaves together and going, "That's it, this is going to end poorly," after, after the fact, during your research?

There's quite a few of them. I think the most obvious one was he had a friend when he was stationed in, not stationed, but he was in Texas at that mental health psychiatric ward for three months. Once they released him and were figuring out how to send him to the base in New Mexico, he met a girl that he considered his girlfriend, and he confided in her that he wanted, that somebody had done him wrong and he wanted to pay them back, and that they were going to have to take him down. And she took that to mean that he was going to get into some sort of incident that would require the police to shoot him. And so far as we know, she didn't report that to anybody until after the fact, and no, no action was taken. But there were also some other stalking incidents at Fairchild before he was sent to the mental health facility in Texas, where he was, he was obsessed with his roommate and the complaint that he made about him. And the roommate had threatened, jokingly threatened to throw his alarm clock out the window because it was an old, Big Ben wind-up clock that ticked loudly. And when the roommate complained about it, Melberg (the shooter) said that he couldn't get rid of it because he needed it. And when he, the roommate threatened or joked that he was going to throw it out the window, he took that seriously and and it was a crime against humanity that he had threatened his clock. So he kept following him around and stalking him at his workplace, asking if he really intended to hurt his clock. Just some pretty bad, bizarre behavior. He also requested some medical records and said that if he didn't get them, that he wished them to be sent to his next of kin, which is kind of an indicator that next of kin is normally only used, as far as I'm concerned, when you've already been dead or after you've been killed.

So you, you brought up some points that, that we see across the board. And because I want to get into kind of how, how and why you ended up writing the book. But before we get into that, you know, you, you even mentioned, you said, you know, "This person that he thought was his girlfriend," you know, that that you see in a lot of, that's, that immediately reminded me of Seung-Hui Cho (the Virginia Tech shooter). You know, he had a girlfriend. She didn't know that she was his girlfriend, right? It's one of those. But the, the big thing you, you said too is he told her, right? So he confided in her that this is what he was going to do, maybe not a detailed plan, but he said something, right? He said, "Yeah, I got to get back at these people." Well, that happens in almost all of these cases.

Manifesto. There's, yeah, there's a manifesto.

But especially with social media, they have, they post about stuff and it builds and it builds. And then there's always some after-the-fact, everyone goes, "You know, there's, there's some prophetic, you know, saying or posts that they do." And you're going, "Well, yeah, they're, they're screaming out to the world." Like all of the, all this, this, this kid's behavior the entire time is he screaming out to the world, "I want to be heard, I want attention. Everything's about me," right? And he's screaming the whole time and everyone's just kicking the can down the road, kicking the can down the road. Now we've gotten a little bit better at it, but it's still out there because, you know, like you said, his, I forget, I can't remember in the Marine Corps called drill instructor, but his, whatever they call it in basic military training, you know, even him, he's going like right, right there, he's going like, "Hey, he's a no-go. Like that, this is, I've seen this before. I've been doing this a while. Like I know when someone's just having a hard time assimilating and when someone does not belong here, and he does not belong here." And then it's, "Well, hey, you're not going to tell me how to do my job. Get them through the training." And then the next guy is going, "Hey, this dude's got problems." This is what I mean, and just screaming. And so when that institution like that, and that comes down a lot of times a lack of leadership. And, and you know, there's a whole bunch of issues into there. It's no different than the B-52 pilot. Same thing. Everyone going, "Hey, there's, this is what he's doing. He's screaming out to the world, I'm unsafe at any speed." And, and no one's doing anything. So, so we see that in all these cases. All the school shootings are exactly like that. Workplace violence, it's all out there. People talk about it, people show their weapons, people tell someone, people act stuff out. Suicide's the same way, "Hey, one of these days I'm going to blow my brains out," right? And they, they act it out. And you mentioned the word earlier, it's a rehearsal. So, so you see someone who's literally going to commit suicide. There's a famous actor who did that. He kept doing it on set and, "One of these days I'm going to blow my brains out." Well, guess how he ended up doing it? Just the way he acted it out. He put a gun to the side of his head and he, he blew his brains out. So, so people are just screaming this stuff out there. So it kind of brings me to, I'm just curious as to, you know, how and why you ended up writing the whole book about, I mean, it's an incredible story, an incredible book. And for me, and I'm sure for Greg, the whole time like from page one, man, I'm like doing that, like my neck hurt because I was shaking my head the whole time going like...

Are you kidding me? How many books, how many books have I that are that are bent pages? What do they call that? Dog-eared?

Yeah, and mine's all highlighted and then I have arrows going back to other pages, Andy. Like, you're hoping, you're getting, you're just shaking your head. So I'm just curious as to what, because now you had a career and stuff after the Air Force and you've been involved in law enforcement stuff. So, so how did you come about, you know, writing the book and why you want to do it? And was there something else or was there something that occurred? Was it you processing it? Was it what was that? How come you decided to write all this?

Yes, there's the two storylines: the B-52 crash and then the hospital shooting. But then there's a third, which is my story, which is pretty much just briefly interspersed amongst those other two incidents in small chapters. But it's, excuse me, my interest in the incident stemmed from me trying to figure out what happened and why, because I blamed myself for the people who were killed and wounded because I didn't get there in time, because I didn't know how long it took me to respond. It felt like it took forever because of the time distortion, so I kind of beat myself up, didn't really see that I saved lives, I saw that a lot of people were killed on my watch. So I did a lot of investigating to try to come up with the audio tape of the police response so I could see how long it took me to get there. And it ended up only being a two-minute or less than two-minute response time from the time that I got the radio call to the time that I radioed in that the individual was down was less than two minutes. So I started to forgive myself there and started to address a lot of the other post-traumatic stress symptoms that I had developed. But after I started digging into it and reading all of the reports and talking to people who had known the pilot and the shooter, I realized that there was a lot of lessons that could be learned and that a lot of the shootings that were happening since then had a lot of similar behaviors and traits that people weren't picking up on. So I wanted to document both of the incidents as thoroughly as I could so that people could maybe learn to recognize future incidents before they happen.

One thing I read, Andy, as a matter of fact, I heard it and then read it. It was about three years ago, and I'm going to try to pull up the quote, I apologize for the delay. You were talking about prolonged exposure to this incident, meaning, folks, that you've got to understand that he took an active role in the incident. He took an active role because he was investigated, and he was, after the shooting, and it had to be deemed whether it was a legal shoot or not. Then Andy took it upon himself to investigate the Bud Holland and the shooting. There was so much that went on, and somebody asked you about, "Hey, how did this prolonged exposure to the incident, how did it change you?" And you, and it's a quote, you said, "Every time I wrote or read or re-read something about the incident, it had a lesser effect." Well, the incident defined you, and it's clearly still a part of you and how you feel and how you think 26 years later. And you even mentioned it, and it's not self-diagnosed PTSD. The emotional toll of an incident like this never goes away, but your body and your brain, and like Brian said, your electrochemical neurotransmitters, find a way of compartmentalizing it until a sight, a smell, a taste, a feel, the wrong question, the wrong movie, something happens in your life and brings it all back up again. So as important as it is to remember that guys like Chuck Remsburg and Mas Ayoob were there to help you, saying, "Hey, you got to write about this," or acting as an example, an exemplar of the type of book, it's important for everybody watching and reading to remember that this is also your therapy. You going on these shows, you writing this book, do you see it as that? How long was it before you noticed that this was going to be your way to cope with this event?

It pretty much immediately. I realized that it was helpful for me to talk about it. I tried talking to people about the shooting and how it was affecting me prior to it leading to me getting out of the Air Force. I got out after five years after the incident due to stress and anxiety. But yeah, every time I talk with people like you or give a presentation to a group, it gets easier for me to talk about. You can still hear the emotion in my voice, absolutely, but it used to be tears would come to my eyes and I wouldn't be able to speak. So it's gotten a lot easier and it is helpful, and also knowing that people might learn from the incidents and or my experience is helpful, just knowing that there's something positive can still come from it. But yeah, it was, it was clearly good for me to meet the incidents and the effects of trauma head-on by deep diving into the pre-incident and talking to the survivors and such, just to know that they're going through a lot of the things that are affecting me even though I didn't, wasn't shot and I didn't lose a loved one, but the symptoms of trauma are pretty similar even if the inciting incidents are different.

No, you're, you're absolutely right. And so we, I do, you know, I, I again, we deal with this stuff and I know you talk about this stuff a lot and Greg and I have our own experience. So, so I just, forgive it's like, "Hey, I, I appreciate you sharing that story," because I could tell right when you got done telling, you took a sip of water. I was like, "Oh, that's right. I'm being so callous here," like because, you know, you wrote a book about this and we're so used to talking stuff that like, I still know anytime I share something personal like that, like, yeah, it still hurts, but like you said, like it gets better and then you deal with it and you get to talk to people and they need to laugh about stupid that happened, you know, that you did that, you're like, "I can't believe I did the biggest boneheaded thing during the situation." But, you know, and, and that's all, that's, that's really, really good for anyone who's been through that stuff. But, to talk specifically about the book, I really enjoyed the way you did it. And I think, I really wish people understood these incidents in the manner in which you describe them, right? Because, I take for example, anytime you see something happening with law enforcement in the U.S. and another person, I don't care what the incident is, whether it's a shooting or an arrest or whatever, right? People just take it like, "Oh, here's that 30 seconds or a minute of video that I saw and everything, that's all it is." And where you start your book, man, it's great because you're talking about, you talk about you growing up. You talk about Melberg (the shooter) growing up. You talk about the, the, I forget the B-52 pilot, like...

So, so, yeah, Bud Holland, sorry.

So basically, when I'm reading this, I'm going, "Okay, I'm looking at like three different trains, different tracks, and I know they're all going to intersect at Fairchild. I know that something's happening and this is not." But it, and I love that one because it's engaging and it's cool and I get to go, but I think people don't realize like that's what goes into these incidents. So it's, it's everything about that person's life, everything they've done up to that, that specific day, what's going on in their head, what, how they've been treated, how they haven't been treated. Like these things, it's never just one simple incident. It's literally lives throughout however long coming together at the single point of, of, of, you know, where, where they intersect. And when one person might have one role and another person might have another role, but, but you, you both, we're technically, you're both Air Force, you're both military veterans. So, so you're actually, we're on the same team at one point, you know what I mean? So, so these are very, very complicated and complex issues. And I just appreciated the book because even though I sat there and got the, the neck ache because I'm going like, "Oh, you got to be kidding me. Oh, you got to be kidding me. Oh, you got to be kidding me." Like doing that, "Son of a," like people are probably staring at me on the airplane, you're like, "What is this guy reading?" You know? But because you see it...

They do that often, by the way.

Yeah, but we, we see it coming. But like, I, I think it just does a great job of, of, of showing how these incidents coalesce, you know, like how just how the universe was formed, right? And they all coalesced together and then boom, you have planet Earth or boom, you have this impact, right? So I think it's really cool and I, I really like how you did that, man. So I don't know...

Let me throw in an epiphany moment too, Brian. My epiphany moment with my signed, dog-eared copy of your book that's got all kinds of notations in it was when I was thinking of Valentine's Day and Nikolas Cruz walking into Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and shooting the place up. Now your book doesn't touch on that at all, but your book is a lessons learned. Your book is an after-action review that can easily teach you about those incidents. So your shooter took a cab with the gun in a duffel bag to the location. The cab driver knew what he had in there. He, he knew or should have known what he had in there. Then he went into a bathroom, unloaded his gear, and then went on a rampage. On the way out to the rampage, he ran into a couple of other airmen that looked and clearly must have known that he was checked out mentally and that he was carrying a gun. Now, every single one of those things happened in Florida when Nikolas Cruz showed up to shoot up the school, almost at the same time, running into the students. Brian, you'll remember the video where he ran into the fellow students on the stairwell. So we better get out of here, it's about to go sideways. Okay? So these incidents have parallels because humans are finite. Humans have an emotional bandwidth. Humans have a human behavior bandwidth. And what you've done to illustrate in the book is you've gone to great detail to tie two completely disparate, completely different events together, but show the psychological and the sociological toll on humans close to them, things that you could have seen. And that's what I think the beauty of the book is that, and I'll tell you, I fully intend to get a couple of copies and give them to the people in my life that always ask is, "Oh, I want to do what you and Brian do. I think that's great. How do we get into that life?" Well, you know what, you start, you start having a really, really, really shitty experience. Do you get what I'm trying to say? And like a scab, it starts growing around that crappy experience and then it overwhelms you. All it either, either it either takes over or you, or you, you figure it out. Like, or you exercise it, you cut it out, you went, "All right, what, what the hell am I dealing with? What the hell you?" That was your attempt at understanding. And if people just realize that's technically all Greg and I do now. It may get us at a very high level sometimes. It may be very low level. May get super scientific. It might get very street level. But like, all we're trying to do is articulate experiences. Like, I don't understand, like I always tell people, "I'm the dumbest, knuckle-dragging Marine you've ever met. I don't understand anything." So therefore, all I do is study to try and figure out what the hell to do. Like, I know I put my left foot then my rifle, like I know how to walk. All right, now I know how to run. Like it's like, how do I think? And all that in between is what bothers you. And, and that that that's so true. That journey you take on in the book is so cool that like you took it from that. I'm just curious as to like, did you, how did you come up with telling the story that way? Did you speak to someone on it? Did they go, "Hey, why don't you lay down?" Like, how did you storyboard it that? Like, because you know, I mean, how you tell the story is just as important as the story and the much more compelling. I'm curious as to how you came up with the idea to tell it that way.

Well, a lot of people were telling me I shouldn't put both stories in one book, that they required their own book on their own. But after seeing the incidents, the tragedies couldn't be further different from each other as far as what happened with the airplane and the hospital shooting. But the incidents that occurred, the people, the warning signs, and the inactivity of leadership, there were so many similarities, and they happened within four days of each other, that they had to be told together because, like you say, Greg, they're very similar in how they were allowed to happen and how they could have been prevented. But yeah, I knew that some people weren't going to be interested in the airplane part and some people weren't going to be interested in the shooting part, depending on who they were. But I wanted to be able to reach a broader audience, so I put them both in there but interspersed the chapters so that you wouldn't get tired of one subject, and by the time you got tired of one, you were into the next one. And also, started out the first chapter kind of telling you what's about, what's going to happen at the end of the book, so that it peaks your interest. And then you, from that viewpoint, knowing that these tragedies are going to occur, you can see the buildup to them in the chapters that lead up to it. You can see what's happening and what should have been done to stop it.

Yeah, Hitchcock, Hitchcock does the same thing. And I'm putting you with Hitchcock, you haven't made a film yet, Andy, but you may. And if you are going to do a film—that's that guy that was stalking you—if you are going to do a film, consider me for the role of Hitchcock because I think I weigh about as much. But, if you've seen any of the Hitchcock's classics, Vertigo just comes immediately to mind. At the beginning of the film, they tell you everything that's about to happen. The Rope, they tell you everything that's about to happen, but it's the intrigue. It's the, it's the emotional toll. It's the, "Oh my gosh, how is he going to get out of that one?" And that's what you did. You, you really wove that together well. And I would admonish, I always tell people, "Do your homework." And Brian and I are always screaming and "Training Changes Behavior." Andy, with all the stuff that you got involved with, it was a two-minute ride on your bicycle and it was nanoseconds to fire four rounds. Yet the book is 300, almost 400 pages long, and all of those real incidents you synopsize down into little gems. So life is big and it's vacuous and it's long, and if you only ever look at, at "bang," that that second at "bang," you miss everything that comes before it, and you miss all those things after it that you could use to train and teach and manipulate new law enforcement or first responders or HR people so they don't miss. And, and Brian, I really think that's the service we're trying to do, because we're trying to make sure a parent doesn't miss the signal. We're trying to make sure a teacher doesn't miss a signal. And Andy, you've done in your book just that. And the great thing, I, folks, I brought up Remsburg, Chuck Remsburg, a great friend, Caliber Press genius, used to host on-the-road weekend things that the coppers could actually afford to get to. You saw a Remsburg book, book one of the early 80s, he did, he did '80, '82, all the stuff before, on coffee table, Brian, before the Grossman stuff was out there. He was talking and he compiled the best up series of, "Hey, roll your Streamlight flashlight. You can't do that with a Kel-Lite because of where the on and off switch is." I've still got my copies, they're, they're, they're worn in too. You also had a chance encounter, some, I believe it was outside of Seattle, with Mas Ayoob. Mas Ayoob, the pioneer of some tactical stuff with flashlights and pistols that everybody loves, everybody that's a copper bows to Mas Ayoob. If not for those encounters, do you think you would have fully realized and gone down this road or did it help to bump shoulders with some SMEs (Subject Matter Experts) along the way, Andy? Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, it definitely helped. Mas Ayoob, I was kicking around the idea of writing a book, but probably never would have gotten around to it, except for I went to a training event with Mas Ayoob and was talking to him afterwards, and he suggested that I write a book, and that was all the more encouragement that I needed. I started that day.

That's great.

I'd already been compiling a lot of the research material, but I really started in earnest in investigating. It took me seven years of research and interviews to gather all of the information that is in the book.

But it took seven years to graduate high school. So we understand that kind of timeframe and the dedication required. A lot of people go to college for seven years.

Yeah, they're called, they're called doctors.

So, no, but, but that just, that process alone was painstaking, but that's what makes the book. You, you understand, you, you don't throw together a bunch of platitudes and what if. And you know how, how historic that that Beretta should be sending you gear annually. Do you get what I'm trying to say, for that damn M9 contract, by the way? Yeah, because that's just, you had just as equal a chance of throwing that at him. But I'm just saying, you know, your level of detail is another endearing quality of that book.

Awesome, thank you so much. I'd read quite a few books after this, after I was involved in the incident. Read about lots of different workplace violence and other stories like that, like Columbine and other books. And this book that I ended up writing is the book that I would have wanted to read about this incident and others. So I appreciate the compliment. I'm glad you liked it.

That's a, that's actually a great way to go about it, what you just said right there. Like, "Hey, you know, if I want to know about this incident, I want to know everything and what do I want to read about?" And that, and that's, that's why I like it and I'm glad you went ahead because that's the thing is like, normal person's going to go, "Well, look, a B-52 crash and this guy's shooting, that has nothing to do with one another." Where Greg and I were instantly like, "Oh, you've got to be, you bastard!" We even called each other at that point.

Yeah, we've, we've murder-boarded with our military programs and we've had some really good bosses and shitty bosses with one. They used to, you know, put all the photos up from the PowerPoint and go, "This, like, why is, why is this here?" You had us at hello because you knew that the intrigue would only build and you knew that what, at the end of the day, Bud Holland showed stress fractures, and what you wanted to do was shine a light on them. And you knew that Melberg (the shooter) had stress fractures, you want them to shine a light. And you knew that you had human limitations. So you're kind of the thread that binds, but again, because you're such a humble guy, you don't really bring it out very much in the book. You even, you even sort of mention it in passing a little while ago. But there's a third character in the book, oh, we all know that, but you were so cool about adding that that it didn't come to the forefront, "Look what I did." You know? And I appreciate that as well. I, I really think that was a great thing.

Awesome, thanks, Greg.

We're probably going to steal your your case studies. You did such a good job with the case study because we, we do our own on on different stuff. But when you do a case study, you go, you got to really sit there and go through the details because the normal stuff that comes out in the news is like, "Okay." But then you'll go, you got to go through an article and then see one thing and go, "Oh, wait a minute, what is that?" And go into that. Then you got to go into that and then you find out all the stuff. And like you did all that in these cases. So this is exactly a perfect case study that we would use in class literally and go, "All right, I'm going to tell you what an active shooter at a hospital on an Air Force base and a B-52 crash has everything in common with each other." And people are going to, "I don't get it." And then by the end they go, "Holy crap, this is about human performance. This is about stress fractures. This is about pre-event indicators. This is about warnings unheeded." You know what I mean? This is like, all right there.

And we can never get you off of the the place where you've sequestered yourself against the zomboc.

Yeah, exactly, because that that's just one sheet of plastic behind him. Those are all drawn on there, you know what I'm saying? Because he doesn't want to disclose his location. Andy, we'd love to collaborate on something. We'd love to have you drop in on some of our training and tell your story firsthand because what we do is, is so far left of bang that we don't, we want to mitigate well before it happens. And, and this is the tale of exactly that. Two tales, three actually, if you include your life, which we both discounted early on.

Absolutely, yeah. I would, I would love to participate. I've been binge listening to your podcast so much that Greg's voice is haunting my sleep now.

So, yep. Yeah, I really appreciate it. My wife said that for 38 years so far. She sits up and goes, "Just shut the f-up!" Thank you. Yeah, well, that's good. Thanks, thanks for that. And, and you, you know, I hope you get the, clearly you're binge watching so you get the message. There's still some people that haven't caught on that this is the way you, you can get the scar tissue and the skin deeds and live through it the hard way or you can go back and go, "Wait a minute, take a knee," not the Copernic knee, but, "I could have had a V8." And in those moments in your book are, are compelling. And I'm looking forward to your next book. And here's your next book, Andy. And I'm sure that you, you've got some laying around. Your next book is Post-Traumatic Stress: How to Survive This Incident and Have a Wonderful Life Afterwards. Because you got to understand, man, that it's been 26 years, and the 25th anniversary they had a big thing at Fairchild and put up some other stuff on there. But, but you've got a story of survival. I mean, it beat you down, it tore you down. It, it changed the trajectory of your life. We'd love to hear what was after that. And not through some, some podcast, you know, write it down, write, write those stories down because you've, you've lived a long life and seen a lot of other people. One of the things that the show has opened Brian and I up to is other people with a story. And, and we start somewhere over here thinking this is going to be what the podcast about. And boy, they start disclosing stuff and we find out it's a rich tapestry. And I highly encourage you to do that with yours.

All right, sounds good.

All right, we, we appreciate you coming on, Andy. This has been awesome. Thank you for sharing your story. Everyone, Warnings Unheeded. Check all the links in the episode details. They'll be linked there to Amazon. You can either order hard copy or do the Kindle version. Just make sure you charge your iPad before you get on your flight because I'm an idiot and I did not, but I had to wait to get home and finish it.

Plus Marren is going to post Andy's home address and phone. Any follow-up or any questions that you want, Andy, that'll get you back in the game a little faster than your manager or to some of our listeners...

Yeah, or some of our listeners up in the Pacific Northwest who need an area to break contact, who maybe Andy has a safe haven. Exactly, because it's getting a little, getting more than a little crazy up there. But Andy, thanks, man. We, we really appreciate you coming on, man. It's such a cool story. I love how you wove everything together. You had your own personal story in there, which makes sense. Like just, I mean, I literally sat there and that's the best analogy I could give, it's like watching a train, three trains leave three separate stations and they're going, "Oh, these are going to intersect." And when they intersect, "Oh, man." Like, and you're just watching them slowly go along. And so it really, it hooked me right away, which, which I love. And then, you know, all the, the detailed research that you did is what's important because, you know, you're, you're bringing forward lessons learned. You're saying, "Here's the lessons, here's where we failed, let's fix it." Okay? And, and that's, that's the whole beauty of it. It's not calling people out. It's not saying, "Hey, you're a terrible human," or, "You missed that." It's like, "Look, here's all of them." So, so if you're going to put it on someone, one, obviously the, the shooter or the pilot that that did this, right, it's their responsibility. But then everyone along the way that had an interaction had, had their, had a way, had some responsibility for letting this go through. And I, and once we all accept responsibility that it's our fault, not, not, you know, point the finger at someone else that, "Hey, no, we're all involved in this." I think we'll get better at dealing with them. But that, that might take a lot. I don't know, people don't like accepting, yes.

So, yeah, that's, that's one other thing that, that I took from, from all of this research is that people made the easy, hard decision, or should have made the easy, or the, the hard right decision was not made in quite a few instances. And even if you think your job is, is meaningless, there was a couple instances where just a paperwork error allowed this incident to progress, where somebody checked the wrong box. So attention to detail and, and in everything you do, you never know what it's going to lead to if you, if you don't pay attention and do the best you can.

Nice. Spot on. And Brian, there's a whole another show here. Obviously, you saw that. And Andy, we'd like to have you think about coming on again. Marren and I, one of the things that we carry around, we carry our PFACs (Personal First Aid Kits) with us everywhere we go, whether it's on a plane and a boat, on a goat. We always carry our door wedges around with us. We carry our tourniquets around with us. We get just a small little kit we carry all the time that we tell people about on almost every show. And the whole reason about it is that you can't predict everything. And as far left of bang as you're operating, you might miss something. And if you do miss something, you can take dramatic first aid steps, like we're taking in this incident, life-saving first aid steps. And you don't got to be an ER doc to save a life. And here you don't have to be a psychologist to listen to Andy's story. You don't have to be a doctor to learn from it. You can be just a common mom, dad, HR person. And Brian, you can walk away with a lot of great info.

Yep. All good stuff. Appreciate it again, Andy. Everyone, pick up the book, Warnings Unheeded by Andy Brown. I will have all the links up in the episode details, take you right to the place where you can purchase it. So thank you so much for tuning in and for your comments as we went along. Really appreciate everyone, and don't forget that training changes.