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Profiles in Enrichment tells the stories of USEC employees who have made great contributions to the company or our local communities.
USEC Protective Forces Officer Mark Reed
June 10 was a typical busy day for Paducah Protective Force Officer Mark Reed. A shiftworker, Mark was trying to make the most of his day off, running errands and checking up on family and friends. Little did he know that before the day was over, he would find himself facing an armed assailant, relying on his training and experience to diffuse a situation that threatened to turn deadly.
In fact, a series of what he believes were providential coincidences led to Mark being thrust into a dangerous situation at a Mayfield, Ky., home improvement store that afternoon when a woman entered and began firing a gun at her husband, a store employee.
Mark, a former member of the Mayfield City Police Force, had already been forced to re-schedule a morning appointment at his bank in Mayfield. The new meeting time left him with some free time, so he decided to stop by the hardware store for a brief visit with his sister Karen Winn, a store employee. But she was too busy, and asked him to come back an hour later when she could take her break and spend a few minutes catching up.
Mark was about to leave the store when he ran into a couple from his church and lingered a few minutes to chat. It was during this friendly exchange that the first hint came that something was about to go terribly wrong.
A loud “boom” echoed through the store. Mark said his first thought on hearing the sound was that a large pallet had fallen from one of the store’s upper shelves. He saw a few employees begin to move toward the area where the sound originated, to check for injuries and secure/clear the fallen merchandise. Mark, a couple of aisles over, moved in that direction as well, to see what was going on.
Seconds later, there were three more loud noises in rapid succession. “I knew immediately they were gunshots,” Mark explained. “So I started yelling for people to get back, and at the same time I grabbed my phone and dialed 9-1-1.”
USEC Protective Forces Officer Mark Reed inspects a truck at the Paducah Gaseous Diffusion Plant
Mark credited his Protective Force training at USEC with helping him recognize what was happening and what he could do to help. “We do a lot of training for ‘rapid response-active shooter’ situations,” Mark said. “We deal with things just like this, so I did exactly what I was trained to do at the plant.”
Mark told the 9-1-1 operator what was happening and kept warning people in the vicinity to move away. He said he saw the shooter, a woman, skirting the outside wall, moving toward the store entrance, still carrying a weapon. “I knew I needed to keep her from leaving the store, so I continued to approach slowly and began talking to her,” Mark explained.
He said he asked her if she or anyone else was hurt and then asked her to put the gun down. The woman stopped, turned around to look at Mark, then opened the cylinder on the .357 caliber revolver, removed the rounds and laid them on a checkout counter.
“I just kept talking to her, trying to keep her calm and keep everyone else from over-reacting until the police could get there.” Mark said.
Mayfield City Police responded to the store in less than five minutes and took the woman into custody without further incident. Amazingly, the woman’s husband, apparent target of those shots, suffered only a minor injury.
“This was a bad situation,” Mark said, “but, thank God, no one was hurt. I think I was just meant to be there.”
Mark, who served on the Mayfield Police Force for a total of nine years, said that though he had been involved in several dangerous situations as a policeman, this was the first time he had faced an active shooter. “It was an odd and eerie feeling,” he explained.
Mayfield Mayor Arthur Byrn praised Mark’s actions in a June 11 Paducah Sun article: “I’m extremely proud of Mark and appreciative of what he did because I think there’s a very good possibility he saved a life or lives of others this afternoon…It doesn’t surprise me that he would do that because he was an excellent police officer for us and I’m very glad he was there.”