Chargers surprise hero of Club Q shooting with Super Bowl tickets
On Sunday, the Chargers presented Richard Fierro, an Army veteran who stopped a gunman at a LGBTQ nightclub in Colorado Springs, with tickets to this year's Super Bowl.
Just before midnight on Nov. 19, a 22-year-old assailant stormed into Club Q and opened fire with a semiautomatic rifle, killing five and injuring 25 more. Fierro, who was there with his wife to attend a birthday party with their daughter, helped to subdue the shooter.
“I grabbed him by the back of his little cheap-ass armor,” he told The Times shortly after the incident. Fierro's wife, Jessica, and his daughter Kassy survived the attack. Kassy's boyfriend, Green Vance, was killed.
On Dec. 30, Fierro and his family went to visit the Chargers' practice facility in Costa Mesa. In a video posted by the team, players lined up on the field to greet Fierro and shake his hand.
In a Facebook post written after the visit, Fierro wrote: "...the team did not have to do any of this, I'm so grateful and humbled by this gesture."
Then on Sunday, before the Chargers' final home game of the regular season, Richard and Jessica stood in the end zone at SoFi Stadium with Hall of Famer LaDainian Tomlinson. The team posted a video in which Tomlinson hands Richard a large, wrapped object.
Richard tears off the wrapping to find an oversized ticket to this year's Super Bowl, to be played Feb. 12 at State Farm Stadium in Glendale, Ariz. Waving the ticket in the air, the longtime Charger fan yells in excitement: "Touchdown, baby!"
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
