Army Sgt. Brian Lieberman, a paratrooper assigned to 1st Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, receives the Soldier’s Medal from Col. Jason Schuerger, commander of 1st Brigade Combat Team, during a ceremony at Fort Bragg, N.C., on May 6, 2025. (Prim Hibbard/U.S. Army)
Army Sgt. Brian Lieberman said he was simply doing what the service trained him to do when he risked his own life to respond to the sounds of gunshots outside his Fayetteville, N.C., apartment almost two years ago.
“I went into fight or flight,” the 22-year-old combat medic with the 82nd Airborne Division’s 1st Brigade Combat Team said of his June 6, 2023, heroics for which he was awarded the Soldier’s Medal on Tuesday at Fort Bragg. “I was just doing my job.”
The soldier was in his apartment with his roommates that evening when he heard gunshots and immediately grabbed his personally owned firearm and ran toward the commotion near the apartment complex’s pool, according to the citation for his Soldier’s Medal, the Army’s top award for noncombat heroics. Lieberman shouted out that he was an Army medic and was pointed to a victim — a 14-year-old girl — who had been shot.
He began treating the victim when he heard a car “rapidly approaching” and saw “an individual hanging out of the rear window aiming a firearm at him,” according to the citation.
“I threw myself over the girl, almost used myself as a shield [for] her so she wouldn’t get shot again,” Lieberman said. “I pulled out my weapon and returned fire, then continued to treat the victim.”
After the car fled the scene, Lieberman used a plastic grocery bag as an improvised chest seal to slow the victim’s bleeding until he could receive proper medical supplies.
His actions saved the girl’s life and were credited with helping end the active shooter incident, according to the Army.
Col. Jason Schuerger, the 1st Brigade’s commander, said Tuesday that Lieberman’s response to the gunfire went above and beyond the call of duty and was not the kind of reaction most people have to such incidents. The colonel said the soldier’s actions showed the courage of paratroops from the 82nd Airborne, especially combat medics.
“Without a doubt our airborne medics move to the sound of gunfire to save lives,” Schuerger said. “Of course he moved to the sound of gunfire, of course he administered aid, of course he saved somebody’s life.”
The Soldier’s Medal was established in 1926 to “recognize distinguished individual acts of heroism not involving actual contact with any enemy,” according to the Army.
Lieberman said Tuesday that he did not expect to receive the high honor. He said he still finds the entire incident at his home on American soil difficult to believe.
“It was surreal,” he said. “Felt like I had woken up the next day from a crazy dream.”
