America’s toughest policewoman was as modest as she was mighty yesterday in her first public words since taking down the murderous Fort Hood Islamist in an exchange of gunfire.
Still hospitalized from bullet wounds, Sgt. Kimberly Munley — nicknamed “Mighty Mouse” for her tiny frame but immense courage — recounted her harrowing encounter with Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, the Army shrink who massacred 13 people and injured 29 last Thursday.
Without a hint of bravado, she said she was simply gassing up her cruiser when she received a radio call of shots fired at the Soldier Readiness Processing Center on the Texas base.
“I was still unaware completely as to what was going on and what we were up against,” Munley, 34, yesterday told the “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” sitting upright in the hospital in Killeen, Texas.
“The entire incident was very confusing and chaotic,” she said, with fellow hero officer Sgt. Mark Todd at her side.
That’s when she and Todd saw Hasan, the psychiatrist-turned-militant Muslim, with gun in hand.
“During the incident while he was firing at me, I had my instructor Doug West in my ear telling me, ‘Mark, calm down, relax, breath, shoot,’ ” Todd, 42, recalled. “I kept shooting. We’re trained to shoot until there’s no longer a threat.”
Hasan crumpled — struck four times.
“Once he was lying on his back, his weapon just fell into his hand and I’m like: ‘OK, now’s the time to rush him and secure him.’ So I ran up and I kicked his weapon away and then we placed him in handcuffs,” Todd said.
“We started lifesaving measures on him,” he added. Hasan is now recovering in an Army hospital.
Munley took three bullets, one in each thigh and a third in her hand. Todd was uninjured.
“I never lost consciousness,” Munley said. “I wanted to stay awake and know everything that was going on and control my breathing and make sure that I was not going to fall into shock.”
“It’s like when people describe it in the movies,” she said. “When I got shot, it felt like a muscle being torn out of my leg.”
Her ER physician, Dr. Kelly Matlock, said Munley’s first words after surgery were, “Did anybody die?”
Munley, 5-foot-2 and 125 pounds, once tackled a suspect in North Carolina who was going for her partner’s weapon.
Oprah teased Munley, calling her “petite and powerful.”
Munley is married to an Army Special Forces officer and is the mother of two daughters, ages 2 and 12.
“My oldest one thinks it’s quite funny that every time she turns the TV on, her mother is on TV,” Munley said.
“Every day is progress for me, and things are getting better day by day,” she said. “Emotionally, I’m just hoping the rest of the officers and the injured and the families of the deceased are healing as well.”