Three days ago, a Special Forces soldier was reported to have barricaded himself inside a National Guard armory which 20th Special Forces Group shared with another unit.  The facility also housed a police academy and several live fire ranges. Charles Muchanic made headlines across the country as police surrounded the armory, but the story coming out from sources within Special Forces tells a very different tale than the one spun in the press.

Muchanic, assigned to Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, was having some unspecified issues (some reports list him as having been AWOL) but was permitted to be in the armory at the time.  Due to a power outage, the alarms inside the arms room were triggered.  A ground keeper or member of a non-Special Forces unit discovered Muchanic inside and called the police, the assumption being that he was trying to break into the vault that secures the unit’s weapons.

The police showed up at the armory, and soon heard gunfire which then led to an assumption that they were dealing with a full blown John Rambo situation so the SWAT team was spun up as well.  In reality, this was just gunfire from an adjacent shooting range.  The police never attempted to contact Muchanic, and when press reports state that he surrendered to the police, he was actually just leaving the building for his own reasons, probably unaware that the police were outside waiting for him.  Muchanic turned himself over without incident.

In the end, it sounds like the supposed stand off was a typical Army story of confusion and misunderstanding rather than a re-enactment of a Sylvester Stallone movie with live ammunition.

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