Puyallup soldier killed in 2017 awarded Silver Star after new video surfaced

TACOMA – Over seven years after he died during a military operation in Niger, a Puyallup, Washington-born military sergeant has received the military’s third-highest honor.

The United States Army Special Operations Command held a Silver Star award ceremony on Tuesday at Pioneer Park for 35-year-old Bryan Black, a special forces medical sergeant. Black – along with three other Special Forces soldiers – died on Oct. 4, 2017, in Tongo Tongo, Niger, when 100 members of the Islamic State attacked the reconnaissance patrol that he was part of. Black was a part of the Fort Bragg, North Carolina-based 3rd Special Forces Group.

“(The purpose of this ceremony is) to stop for a moment and honor just a humble, a thoughtful and intelligent human being who did the most virtuous thing any human being can do,” said Kirk Brinker, the Brigadier General for the U.S. Army Special Operations Command. “Simply put, Bryan Black sacrificed himself for somebody else.”

Black, who graduated from Puyallup High School in 2000 and joined the Army in 2009, was awarded the Bronze Star Medal shortly after his death, honoring his sacrifice. Years later, it’s changing to a Silver Star after officials looked at footage of the event and learned more about what happened that day.

According to a military news release, the information came from a helmet camera worn by Jeremiah Johnson, a sergeant who died alongside Black. Staff Sgt. Dustin Wright and Sgt. La David T. Johnson were also killed in the ambush.

Brinker told The News Tribune that they discovered the helmet camera video in 2021.

“People studied the footage, trying to get a lessons-learned perspective, what happened on the ground,” Brinker said.

Brinker said the new footage shows that Black fired at the enemies and then died after he ran into open fire to help a wounded soldier.

“The footage, we watched over and over again at different angles,” Brinker said. “We realized, not only was he exposing himself when he was shooting, he came out at greater exposure and risked himself to render aid and he was hit in the process.”

‘Puyallup’s hometown hero’

Roughly 70 people gathered for Black’s Silver Star ceremony. Fourteen members of Black’s family – including his widow, Michelle Black; his sons Ezekiel and Isaac Black; his parents, Hank and Karen Black; his brother and sister-in-law Jason and Stephanie Black; and uncles, nephews and cousins – were in attendance.

The ceremony started with the audience standing while “The Star-Spangled Banner” played. Then Dennis King, the deputy mayor of Puyallup, spoke.

“Bryan’s legacy will live on not just as a soldier who served with valor but as a hero who belonged to this community,” King said. “Puyallup is proud to call Staff Sergeant Bryan Black one of our own. Today, as he is awarded the Silver Star, we are reminded of the strength of his character, the depth of his sacrifice and the power of his story. He is and always will be Puyallup’s hometown hero.”

Brinker was the next speaker, and he commended Black for his courage, humbleness and intelligence. He noted that Black had the same fear that anybody else has, but he overcame it, and that everyone can honor Black by overcoming their fears.

Toward the end of his speech, he shared a story about how one of Black’s teammates was taking an online economics class, and how Black helped that teammate.

“One of his teammates is trying to better his education by taking an online class in economics, and there’s Bryan giving a lecture on economics,” Brinker said. “This person, he’s a warrior, he’s a healer, he’s a scholar.”

Michelle Black accepted the Silver Star award from Brinker, followed by a moment of silence. Hank Black then spoke about his son’s passion for the game of chess.

“Bryan began playing chess in the fourth grade when he tagged along with his older brother to the chess club. At the end of the season, Jason won a trophy – Bryan did not,” Hank Black said. “Bryan, at the conclusion of the tournament, stormed out.”

Hank Black found him in the parking lot, he said, and told him that if he wanted to become good at chess, he had to study. Black studied that entire summer and won first place in the tournament the next year, then competed in state tournaments later in his life. He became a regular at the Tacoma Chess Club.

“The courage that Bryan exemplified in chess followed him through life,” Hank Black said. “He became a successful entrepreneur, stock trader, ski instructor, soldier, Green Beret. But beyond that, Bryan excelled at being a husband, a father, a son, a friend.”

Honoring Black’s memory

After Black’s death, his wife, Michelle, wrote a book about her late husband and moved to Puyallup with her sons.

“I know how important knowing your dad is, so I thought, ‘I’m going to self-publish a book of stories about their dad so they can learn who he was,’ ” she told The News Tribune in 2021. “But as I began to write, it really helped me process what was going on, and by that time, it had become a big national story.”

In 2018, Puyallup residents launched a campaign to raise $7,500 and install chess tables downtown as a memorial to Black, who was an avid chess player. That led to a pair of marble chess tables in Pioneer Park to honor him.

“We want Bryan remembered and Puyallup is where he spent a good part of his high school,” Hank Black told The News Tribune in 2018. “We’re honored in Bryan’s name that the community would do something like this … It’ll help people (remember) who he was and the things that he did.”