Today, the 32-year-old pharmacist from Parkersburg, W. Va. (Parkersburg...****in' eh!!!), is becoming the first Army Reserve Soldier to receive the Silver Star for valor in Afghanistan. Staff Sgt. Fetty's commander said his actions went far beyond saving "countless, countless lives."
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Staff Sgt. Fetty's military training kicked in. He began going through his "escalation of force" commands: "Stop. Get down." The "doctor" ignored him, and tried to grab him.
Staff Sgt. Fetty wanted to fire a warning shot, but feared it would ricochet and hit the hospital or someone gathered in the crowd around it. The suspect continued to close in on him and grabbed the barrel of his rifle. At this point, Fetty started to fear the worst. "I was pretty sure he had a (suicide) vest on under his lab coat, but I still didn't know for sure," he said.
Rather than shirking him off, Staff Sgt. Fetty used the distance his weapon created between him and his attacker to his advantage. "I knew that if he grabbed hold of my armor or my person in any way, I was toast," he said. "There was no getting out of it at that point. I wouldn't be able to stop him from detonating himself."
He slowly maneuvered toward a clearing between the hospital and the nearby administrative huts, away from the crowd. "I figured that if I stalled him long enough, everyone else would do their job and get the area cleared," he said.
Staff Sgt. Fetty kept his eyes locked with his attackers'. "The last thing I wanted him to do was lose focus on me, because he didn't want me," he said. "The governor of the province was there, and he was the primary target. Suicide bombers rarely attack Americans; they want government officials. So I had to keep his focus on me."
As the struggle continued, Staff Sgt. Fetty recognized he probably wouldn't survive. "You resign yourself pretty quick. You just stop thinking at that point about yourself," he said. "It was either going to be me or 20 other people back there. ... Suicide bombers are next to impossible to stop. All you can do is limit the damage that they can do."
The chain of events "becomes sketchy" when Staff Sgt. Fetty recalls what happened after he maneuvered the attacker around the corner from the crowd. "Things happened very, very quickly," he said. Friends told Staff Sgt. Fetty he tackled the attacker, but he doesn't remember that. He recalls hitting him with the butt of his weapon, then firing warning shots at the ground near his feet.
The attacker came at him, so Staff Sgt. Fetty fired into his lower legs, then his kneecap. "He stood back up, even though I gave him a crippling wound," he said. "He got back up and tried to come at me again."
Staff Sgt. Fetty said he remembers hearing the blast of weapons from other members of the security team firing at the attacker. He shot again, at the man's stomach. He'd heard that it's safe to fire into a suicide vest, but didn't want to test his luck by firing into the attacker's chest. "That's a bad way for me to end up in a bunch of pieces," he said.
Then the attacker looked at Staff Sgt. Fetty with "the scariest face I've ever seen." The standoff had turned personal. "Earlier, he just looked crazy, but now he wanted to kill me," Staff Sgt. Fetty said. "I knew what his intent was, and I abandoned all hopes of killing the guy before he would explode."
Staff Sgt. Fetty took three steps before making a "Hollywood dive." The blast came as he hit the ground, peppering him with shrapnel in the face, leg and ankle. All that remained where he had struggled with the attacker was a big hole in the ground.
