Osama bin Laden's shooter has been identified as former Navy SEAL Robert O'Neill, whose name was made public ahead of an anticipated Fox News interview where he is expected to discuss the raid in full detail for the first time.
The special operations community blog SOFrep.com identified O'Neill as the key member of SEAL Team 6 who fired the shots that killed bin Laden in a May 2011 raid on his compound in
Abottabad, Pakistan, the Navy Times reported.
O'Neill, who is now a 38-year-old highly decorated veteran and public speaker, retired from the U.S. Navy after serving for 16 years.
His father, Tom O'Neill, told the Daily Mail he's not worried about his son now that he's been identified as bin Laden's killer.
"People are asking if we are worried that ISIS will come and get us because Rob is going public," Tom O'Neill told the Daily Mail. "I say I'll paint a big target on my front door and say come and get us."
O'Neill, one of the nation's most senior SEALs, was part of some of the unit's more high-profile missions, many of which have been turned into feature films. The bin Laden raid, for example, was portrayed in the 2012 movie "Zero Dark Thirty."
He was part of the Operation Red Wing team that saved soldier Marcus Luttrell from Afghanistan in 2005, a mission that played out on the big screen in "Lone Survivor." O'Neill was also was the first Navy SEAL to jump on the Maersk Alabama, which was taken over by Somali pirates in April 2009 as seen in "Captain Phillips."
O'Neill has said in the past that he became a SEAL at 19 to get over a teenage romance, but his father told the Daily Mail a different story.
"We were going hunting and a friend asked us to take a guy who was a Navy SEAL with us," Tom O'Neill said. "We were expecting someone who was 6-foot, 8-inches who could lift a house with his bare hands, but he was this normal guy. And Rob said if this guy could be a SEAL, then so could he."
O'Neill is scheduled to do a sit-down interview with Fox News to air Nov. 11 and 12.
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