Two receive Soldier’s Medal for heroic actions during stabbing in S. Korea
By Jeremy Kirk, Seoul bureau
chief
YONGSAN GARRISON — A year ago, Maj. David Berry was strolling
though Itaewon on a Sunday afternoon, carrying presents for his children.
He was walking back to Yongsan Garrison with his fellow doctors, Maj.
Sergio Bures and Capt. Reginald Baker. As they were walking, a mentally disturbed Korean
man suddenly plunged a 5-inch knife into Berry’s chest.
Berry fell to the ground. Baker and the killer stared at each other.
“My reflex was just to launch toward him,” said the
29-year-old Baker, a general practitioner at Fort Myer in Arlington, Va. “I can
remember thinking ‘This guy is going to kill me.’”
Baker let out a cry, lunged for the knife and wrestled the attacker,
Lee Yong-kyu, to the ground. Bures helped hold Lee while Baker recovered the knife.
“I thought, ‘I’ve just got to prevent the guy from
getting back up,’ ” said Bures, an internal medicine physician at West Point,
N.Y. “I just didn’t want him to hurt us anymore.”
Berry was loaded into a soldier’s car and was transported to the
121st Hospital at Yongsan, about a mile away. Baker said Berry asked him for a favor on
the way to the hospital.
“He had a picture of his family on the key chain, and he asked
me to hold it up so he could look at it,” Baker said. “His mood seemed that he
knew it could have been a lethal injury.”
Berry, 35, died a day later. Lee was sentenced to 15 years in prison
in October.
Baker and Bures were awarded the Soldier’s Medal, the highest
peacetime award for valor, earlier this year. Baker said the recognition is an honor but
is the result of a terrible circumstance.
“It was definitely one of the proudest days but certainly one of
the saddest,” he said.
Bures, 33, said he rarely talks of the incident.
“I have better days than others,” he said. “I was very
proud of what I had done and what Reggie had done.”
The three were in Korea for six weeks to help during a doctor
shortage. Berry and Baker were assigned to Camp Hovey, a 2nd Infantry Division camp about
35 miles north of Seoul, and Bures was assigned to Camp Casey in Tongduchon.
Berry was a pediatric doctor with a specialty in infectious diseases.
“David became a very close friend very quickly,” Bures
said. “He was very calm and very compassionate. He became a true leader in our
group.”
Berry, from Big Spring, Texas, is survived by his wife and five
children. He is buried at the National Cemetery at Fort Sam Houston in Texas.
“I don’t think there is a day that has passed in the last
year that I don’t think about the incident,” Baker said. “I only knew him
for two weeks but he certainly had charisma and a touch with people.”
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