Sergeant Suspects in Fatal Shooting of Five Soldiers at Fort Stewart

Incident at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield

A U.S. Army sergeant shot and injured five soldiers with a personal handgun on Wednesday at Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield near Savannah, Georgia, before being subdued by other soldiers and arrested, according to military officials. The incident occurred shortly before 11 a.m. local time at the suspect's work post on the base, involving co-workers in his unit.

All five soldiers were reported in stable condition after the incident and are expected to recover, although three required surgery, according to Brigadier General John Lubas, the base commander. Lockdown security measures on the base were lifted after the suspect was taken into custody, and there was no threat to the surrounding community, Lubas stated. A motive for the shooting remains unclear.

The suspect was identified as Quornelius Radford, 28, an active-duty sergeant specializing in automated logistics and assigned to a supply unit of the 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team at Fort Stewart. Radford, stationed at Fort Stewart since 2022, had not previously been deployed to combat.

Lubas mentioned that how the pistol slipped through base security onto the installation remains unknown. Other soldiers in the area who witnessed the shooting tackled and subdued the suspect before law enforcement arrived and took him into custody. Radford was later questioned by Army investigators and is currently being held pending charging decisions.

Lubas provided limited information about Radford's background, stating he had a prior drunken-driving arrest, which was unknown to the chain of command until "the event occurred and we started looking into the law enforcement databases."

Speaking to reporters at the White House, President Donald Trump expressed concern, saying, "The entire nation is praying for the victims and their families." He referred to the suspect as "horrible."

Mass shootings are relatively common in the United States, where guns are widely available, and military bases, which are among the highest-security places in the country, have not been spared.

The deadliest such incident occurred 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.