SANTA CLARA, Calif.
— Veteran Chris Brown was one of four people shot and killed Wednesday while protecting another soldier from an attack, a veteran told ABC News.
“I can tell you I was standing in the parking lot and I saw him come down the ramp, and I just said, ‘We need you to come get him,’ and that’s how I got hit,” Brown said.
Brown said he heard multiple shots and saw three of the soldiers fall and another get shot.
One soldier was later identified as Corporal David B. Schulte, who was killed.
Other soldiers were not injured.
The four wounded soldiers were a medic and a sniper, a spokesman for the Army said.
One of the wounded soldiers was wounded by a grenade and is expected to survive, the spokesman said.
Brown said Schulter, who is white, was a sniper who worked at a nearby base.
The other three soldiers were also wounded, but their injuries are not life-threatening, he said.
Brown said Schulde was working to get a medical helicopter to take the wounded to a nearby hospital.
He said Schulter was in the front line and could not be counted on.
“I told him that he’s my friend, that I’m going to support him and that he needs to come help him, and he said, `I don’t know where he’s at, but I need you,'” Brown said in an interview Thursday.
He added that he tried desperately to get Schultemt out of the line of fire to help him get out of harm’s way.
After the shooting, Brown and two other veterans, Sgt. 1st Class Jason L. Oden, 32, and Sgt. 2nd Class Ryan D. Glynn, 26, rushed to help the wounded soldier.
“They were shot, they were shot and they were dying, and we didn’t get to save them,” Brown told ABC.
“The other guys had their arms up and they said, ‘You guys are a bunch of good men. “
You should be here helping people.’ “
The other guys had their arms up and they said, ‘You guys are a bunch of good men.
You should be here helping people.’
And I said, ‘Yeah, but we’re gonna help each other.'”
Brown, a former Army Ranger, said he was wounded Wednesday when a gunman opened fire at his unit at Fort Carson, Colo.
He spent six weeks in the intensive care unit before he was released and began serving with the Marines in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
In the interview with ABC, Brown also said he has been trying to get the military to change its policies toward the use of lethal force.
Last year, a Marine killed an unarmed Afghan who approached a U.S. base in Kandahar, Afghanistan, and shot and wounded the veteran.