ATLANTA (Reuters) -A U.S. Army sergeant is suspected of shooting and wounding five fellow soldiers with his personal handgun on Wednesday at Fort Stewart Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, before he was subdued by other soldiers and arrested, U.S. military officials said.
All five soldiers struck by gunfire were listed in stable condition following the incident and are expected to recover, though three required surgery for their injuries, according to Brigadier General John Lubas, the base commander.
The suspect was identified as Quornelius Radford, 28, an active-duty logistics sergeant assigned to the Second Armored Brigade at Fort Stewart. Lubas said Radford had not previously been deployed to combat.
Lubas said at an afternoon press conference that the shooting unfolded shortly before 11 a.m. local time at the suspect’s place of work on base.
“I don’t believe it had anything to do with a training event. Other than that, I can’t speak to the motivations of this soldier.” He said the firearm used was not a military weapon but a personal handgun.
President Donald Trump has been briefed on the shooting and is monitoring the situation, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt said on X.
Mass shootings are relatively common in the U.S., where guns are widely available, and military bases, which are among the highest-security places in the country, have not been spared.
The deadliest was at the Fort Hood Army base in 2009, when a major fatally shot unarmed soldiers in a medical building with a laser-sighted handgun, killing 13 people and injuring more than 30. Less than five years later, a soldier at the same Texas base fatally shot three service members and injured 16 others before killing himself.
In 2013, an employee of a government defense contractor killed 12 people at Washington’s Navy Yard. In 2019, a Saudi Air Force lieutenant shot and killed three people and wounded eight others at a U.S. Navy base in Pensacola, Florida.
Fort Stewart is located in Hinesville, about 225 miles (362 km) southeast of Atlanta and 40 miles (64 km) southwest of Savannah. Nearly 9,000 people live at the base, according to the 2020 Census.
The base supports approximately 15,000 active-duty Army military personnel, as well as thousands of military retirees, family members, and others, according to its website.
(Reporting by Rich McKay in Atlanta, Phil Stewart, Idrees Ali and Ismail Shakil in Washington and Jonathan Allen in New York; Writing by Joseph Ax and Steve Gorman; Editing by Franklin Paul and Rod Nickel)
Comments