Lennox hero describes fighting for shooter's gun

MARION – Brian Roesler stood up from his cubicle when he heard what sounded like two explosions.

He saw a man walk by, moving toward the woman at the next desk.

He saw a gun.

And then he reacted.

The 45-year-old Sioux Steel employee did all he could to grab the weapon.

Roesler remembers taking a blow to the head and a desperate fight.

"I didn't hear him say anything," Roesler said of the gunman. "The guy didn't speak at all."

The shooting Thursday at Sioux Steel in Lennox likely would have had a worse outcome if not for Roesler's actions, police said.

Hours later, after the chaos, blood, police cars and lockdowns, after officials discovered the body of suspect Jeffrey DeZeeuw near a burned semi miles away, Lennox police posted a note on Facebook, thanking other responders and a yet-unnamed person who they said had created the "best possible resolution to a senseless, horrifying incident."

A hero.

Roesler.

"He noticed what was going on, saw a man with a gun and just engaged him in a fight," Lincoln County Sheriff Dennis Johnson said. "We don't know what the suspect's next steps would have been if Mr. Roesler hadn't intervened, and we may never know that."

Roesler works in customer service for Koyker Manufacturing but is stationed in a small office in Sioux Steel's ProTec building near Highway 17.

Thursday seemed to be like any normal day at first, Roesler said: Fielding calls from his desk. He gets hundreds a day.

Then he heard the gun blasts. He couldn't tell where they came from at first, but Roesler soon saw DeZeeuw moving through the office and raising a gun at his friend and co-worker, Kathy Steever.

He jumped at DeZeeuw to get the gun out of the other man's hands.

"I didn't know what else to do," Roesler said.

Steever was critically injured in the shooting.

Steever, 46, and Roesler are about the same age and like the same kind music — hair-band stuff, Roesler said. Roesler, a Pittsburgh Steelers fan, likes to give Steever a hard time for her allegiance to a rival NFL team, the Baltimore Ravens.

Jon Richter, the man who died in Thursday's shooting, also worked nearby.

"He was a good man," Roesler said. "He played in a band, and they played in a church."

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There are six cubicles in Roesler's office space, which is attached to a long, skinny room where Richter and another man handled dispatch for Plains Xpress, Sioux Steel's trucking subsidiary.

The gunshots came from the other room, Roesler said.

He dove at DeZeeuw as the shooter walked by, but Roesler doesn't remember exactly what happened next.

He's pretty sure DeZeeuw struck him on top of his head and then continued to hit him with the end of the gun, Roesler said.

Roesler kept reaching for the gun. Then he heard two things falling, "like click, click," Roesler said.

He doesn't remember DeZeeuw firing another shot during their fight, but Roesler later found Steever was unable to move. She had been shot.

"I couldn't see where," Roesler said.

DeZeeuw eventually crawled off him and fled. Roesler chased him out the front door, returned to the building and made sure the doors were locked.

By the time he got back, he was alone with Richter and Steever, Roesler said.

"I couldn't find anybody else in the building at that time," Roesler said. "Kept yelling for help."

Roesler thinks the clicking noise was the sound of the clip falling out of the gun. It had been knocked loose on the floor, he said.

A co-worker eventually appeared and helped him give CPR to Steever until rescue crews arrived, Roesler said.

Cathy Roesler, 38, was watching the news at home when she saw a building that looked familiar.

"I said, 'Oh, my God, that's where Brian works,'" she said.

She isn't surprised by her husband's brave efforts to stop the shooter.

"He really cares for others," Cathy Roesler said. "It would be just like him to jump in and help."

Roesler was already en route to the hospital when his wife called him on his cellphone.

Doctors applied stitches to the wounds across his face.

The next morning, Roesler wept as he remembered the horrific events.

"You just can't plan for crazy, you know?" he said. "What do you do? I know Jon's in a better place, and I just hope Kathy recovers."