Photo by Alex McVeigh Senior Airman Terrence Trotman, a Child and Youth program assistant at the Cody Child Development Center, was at the Pentagon when the March 4 shooting occurred. His quick thinking helped several people get to safety when the shooting started.

Trotman works at Joint Base Myer-Henderson Hall’s Cody Child Development Center as a Child and Youth program assistant, in addition to serving in the Air Force Reserves. He was headed home March 4 on his usual route, the shuttle from JBM-HH to the Pentagon, then from the bus stop to the Pentagon Metro station.

As he was walking from the bus stop to the station, right before the visitor’s security checkpoint, he heard a cop yell ‘‘Halt!” and then things turned serious.

‘‘I saw an individual running towards the Pentagon, but towards the exit doors,” Trotman said. ‘‘All of a sudden, I heard two quick shots. It didn’t really register with me, I thought it might be just an exercise.

‘‘Once I heard a rapid succession of return fire, I knew this was for real,” he said.

The first round of gunfire he heard was that of John Patrick Bedell, a mentally ill man who brought two 9mm pistols and several magazines to the Pentagon. He wounded two officers, Jeffrey Amos and Marvin Carraway, before he was hit by return fire.

Upon hearing the return fire, Trotman acted quickly, telling the five or six people next to him to get down.

‘‘We were exposed, there was no cover anywhere, so the only thing we could do was get down,” Trotman said. ‘‘I saw the muzzle flashes and the tracers of the bullets that struck the ‘perp.’ Once the shooting stopped, I immediately signaled everyone to go back to the bus stop. I made sure everyone got back and under cover before I left the spot.”

Not knowing the nature of what had just happened, if more shooters were to come, Trotman wanted to make sure everyone was afforded as much protection as possible in case there was more shooting.

The instinct to make sure everyone was safe comes from Trotman’s training as a military policeman. He currently serves in the Air Force as part of the 459th Security Force at Andrews Air Force Base, and he has an extensive background in military security.

Trotman spent six years in the Army as an MP at Fort Leonard Wood, Mo., before transferring to the Air Force, where he has worked security at McGuire Air Force Base, Pa., Dover Air Force Base, Del., and Andrews Air Force Base.

‘‘I’ve been trained to immediately assess the situation and area, so I was the last one to duck down, since I wanted to see the entire situation,” Trotman said. ‘‘It’s just instinct for me, we always practice scenarios like this so when something does happen, they just naturally kick in.

‘‘It could have been a lot worse, apparently he had a lot of ammunition, and we were in a wide open spot with no protection. Any one of us could have gotten hit,” Trotman said.

This wasn’t Trotman’s first experience with a terrorist attack in the United States. On the morning of Sept. 11, 2001, he was visiting a friend in the north tower of the World Trade Center complex when it was hit by a plane at 8:46 a.m.

‘‘We started to smell fuel coming out of the air ducts, so we got outside as quick as we could. When we were out there, we heard a plane that sounded way, way too close, and we looked up in time to see it crash into the second tower,” he said. ‘‘After this incident, and the Fort Hood shooting, it makes me realize we are all targets.

‘‘I have to be especially aware of it working with children, because there’s no way to defend against this sort of thing unless you are always vigilant,” Trotman said.

Though Trotman’s instincts helped get people out of harm’s way, he doesn’t see anything special about his actions, just that he followed through on what his training had taught him.

‘‘I’m not a hero, I just did what I’ve been trained to do,” he said. ‘‘Those two officers, and the entire Pentagon Police are the heroes. They stopped him before he could do any more harm, and made sure the situation was taken care of quickly.”