Pfc. Andrea Abalos physically removed a drunken, suicidal soldier from the arms room of a barracks on Pioneer Casern. (Troy Darr / Courtesy of U.S. Army)
HANAU, Germany — Pfc. Andrea Abalos realized something was awry when the man struggled to remember his birthday.
A military police officer, Abalos had responded to the basement of an Army barracks on Pioneer Casern where a silent alarm sounded. Someone entered the arms room without reporting why he was there.
In the room, Abalos, 20, found a soldier in blue jeans and a blue sweater holding the keys to the room. That wasn’t suspicious in itself, she said, because the man held a position that allowed him access to the room.
But still, she asked for the basic information she needed to file her paperwork, including the man’s name and where he was born.
When the man fumbled on the third question, Abalos realized he might be drunk. She looked around the room to find a half-empty bottle of rum, she said.
And then, right there, in a room full of guns, Abalos got the shock of her short MP career.
“I am going to do something illegal,” the man told Abalos.
“What’s that?” Abalos recalled asking.
“I am going to blow my brains out.”
Abalos said she knew she had to do something. She asked to speak to the man in the hallway outside of the arms room. He refused.
So she did what came naturally. She tried to forcibly remove him.
At 5-feet tall and 130 pounds, Abalos is one of the smallest MPs in the 527th Military Police Company. The man she confronted stood 6 feet, 2 inches and 220 pounds, according to military police records.
Somehow she managed to wrestle the man out of the arms room and eventually pin him against a wall until other MPs arrived. But not before a violent struggle, she said.
“Some of my boot marks are still there,” Abalos said of the evidence of the wrestling match that carried from the arms room to the hallway.
On Tuesday, Abalos received a commemoration of her efforts: She was awarded the Army Accommodation Medal for saving the life of the man and any others he may have harmed on April 8, according to the Army.
The Army did not release the man’s name. Charges of assault and drunk and disorderly are pending, said Staff Sgt. David Henson, who oversees law enforcement for the Hanau military community.
Henson said he shudders to think of the outcome if Abalos had not been so tough.
“Who knows what would have happened if he had gotten to the weapons,” Henson said.
