A terrifying scene unfolded at Fort Stewart in Georgia on Wednesday after an Army sergeant shot and wounded five of his fellow soldiers. The situation could have been much worse, but his colleagues managed to tackle and arrest him right on the spot.
The good news is, all five are expected to recover, according to the base commander, General John Lubas. He did say, however, that three of them had to have surgery. The shooting put the entire base on lockdown for a while, but things returned to normal once the shooter was caught.
The man they arrested is 28-year-old Sergeant Quornelius Radford. He’s been a logistics specialist there since 2022 and, according to the general, has never been in a combat zone.
The gunfire broke out shortly before 11 a.m. at Radford’s work post on the base. Witnesses from his unit quickly subdued him before military police arrived. “I don’t have reason to believe that it had anything to do with a training event,” Lubas told reporters. “Other than that, I can’t state the motivations for this soldier.”
Officials said it is still unclear how Radford brought a personal handgun onto the high-security facility. He is in custody and awaiting potential charges. Lubas added that a prior drunken-driving arrest surfaced only after investigators reviewed his background.
President Trump spoke from the White House, saying his heart was with the families and calling the guy who did it “horrible.”
A shooting on a military base shatters the very idea of a safe haven. It’s why the ghost of the 2009 Fort Hood massacre, with its 13 lost lives, instantly comes to mind.
Then you picture the sheer size of Fort Stewart—a sprawling city of nearly 24,000 people just outside Savannah—and you can almost feel that wave of fear washing over every single one of them.
