Good job, Sergeant Kimberly Munley

This is a hero's story.

If you hear gun fire, do you go toward it or away from it? Sergeant Kimberly Munley did something few of us could have done. But she was trained well, and she used that training to save countless lives when she charged into a gun fight and shot Major Nidal Malik Hasan who was on a killing spree at Fort Hood, Texas, on 11/5/09.

Here's the way the Statesman described it:

[Director of emergency services at Fort Hood Chuck] Medley said Thursday’s shooting began in a medical area of the Soldier Readiness Center building around 1:20 p.m. By 1:27 p.m., Munley had arrived, he said, and was outside the building when the shooter, who he identified as Hasan, emerged from the building, gun in hand.

Medley said Hasan ran toward Munley, firing at her. He said Munley returned fire with her pistol, hitting him. Munley was shot in both legs and one wrist, he said. He did not know how many times she was shot.

She entered a very dangerous situation and ended the threat. And by golly, she deserves the highest honor for that bravery. Here's more from that same Statesman article:

Munley is a civilian police officer with the Department of the Army and serves as a SWAT team member and firearms instructor for the department, Medley said. He said she joined the police force in January 2008 after serving in the Army.

Medley said the Army police department had been doing ‘active shooter training’ as a precautionary measure since the 2007 mass shooting at Virginia Tech University in which a student killed 32 others before taking his own life.

“When you have an active shooter hurting people, our protocol is to move to the threat and eliminate it. That takes some courage and skill,” he said. “If there was a person there to respond, Kim Munley is the one we would want to be there.”

Going toward not away from gunfire is a hard thing to do. In 2007 I had the privilege of watching some police officers at an active shooter session training session -- see Active Shooter Training at PBLEA for the writeup and a link to photos. An officer explained that the training process was analogous to teaching someone to crawl, walk, trot then run. And the objective was to inoculation the officers to the unpredictability and danger of a situation so he/she could think clearly and proceed to eliminate the threat.

Clearly, Sgt. Munley was trained well, and it paid off.

And she has a personal side.  WSJ says this is Munley's Twitter site:

Name Kim Munley
Location Killeen, TX
Bio I live a good life....a hard one, but I go to sleep peacefully @ night knowing that I may have made a difference in someone's life.

I hope you slept peacefully last night Sgt. Munley, because you sure did make a difference in people's lives yesterday!

Comments

[News Watch 26]

Indeed it was GOOD JOB well done!

[Geo]

Yes, NW26, that was a very good job. She was well trained, and it saved lives. I believe she deserves the highest honor a civilian police officer can get.