On Tuesday's episode of Meet the Press Daily, panelist Yamiche Alcindor and host Chuck Todd incorrectly said Stephen Willeford did not exchange fire with the Texas church shooter or end his attack.
"When I was watching President Trump today, and he was making his argument that [the shooter] was essentially stopped by someone with a gun, I thought he killed himself," Yamiche Alicindor, a national reporter for the New York Times, said. "There was not a big gun fight, and he was not stopped. There needs to be a fact check on how it was stopped."
"Right," Chuck Todd responded. "The narrative with Mike Huckabee and the president is a little bit off the rails."
The facts show that Stephen Willeford did exchange gunfire with the Texas gunman as his attack was still preceding. The story of Farida Brown, as told to the Washington Post by her son David Brown, makes it clear that at least some of the survivors of the attack credit Willeford with saving their lives.
As Farida hid from the shooter, having already been wounded in her legs, the shooter paced back and forth through the church searching for survivors of his initial barrage. He eventually turned his sights on the woman hiding to Farida's left and shot her four times.
"With every shot, she was crying," David Brown told The Post. "She was just staring at my mom while she tried to comfort her."
Farida held her hand and told the woman she was heading to heaven. "Then she thought that it was her turn," her son told the paper. "She just started praying."
That's when, the Post reports, Willeford began shooting at the gunman.
Willeford told conservative YouTube personality Steven Crowder that he believed the gunman was prepared to take many more lives during his attack.
"I'm gonna tell you, and I found out later, they said he had multiple firearms in the vehicle and lots of ammunition," he said. "I don't know what his plan was but my thought in looking at it is he had a tactical helmet and a Kevlar vest, he wasn't through. There was the River Oaks Baptist Church in the same direction that he left, and I'm by no means saying that that's where he was going, but they were in the middle of Sunday morning services too."
Farida Brown was reportedly not shot at again after Willeford intervened, and she managed to survive the ordeal. She is now recovering in the hospital.