Unarmed soldiers rushed a fellow service member who allegedly opened fire at Fort Stewart in Georgia, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll said Thursday. Five soldiers were wounded in the shooting, and the suspect, a sergeant at the Army base, is in custody.
“They were unarmed and ran at and tackled an armed person who they knew was actively shooting their buddies, their colleagues, their fellow soldiers,” Driscoll told reporters Thursday morning.
The suspect, identified as Sgt. Quornelius Radford, is being held in pretrial custody awaiting charges. According to his service record, the suspect joined the Army in 2018 and is assigned to the 2nd Brigade Combat Team. Officials had said the shooting happened in the combat team’s area at the base.
“We train for this on the battlefield, and it’s a different situation when it happens on an installation with one of your own,” Brig. Gen. John Lubas said.
Lubas said that the suspect used his personal weapon in the shooting.
Six soldiers were given the Meritorious Service Medal for their actions during the shooting: 1st Sgt. Joshua Arnold, Staff Sgt. Robert Pacheco, Sgt. Eve Rodarte, Staff Sgt. Melissa Taylor, Master Sgt. Justin Thomas and Sgt. Aaron Turner.
“It’s our training that kicked in,” Arnold told reporters. “Mine kicked in, and you just go to work.”
Taylor said she was in her office at the opposite end of the building and heard Arnold yell about gunshots. She left her office and saw smoke at the end of a hallway.
“I noticed there was a soldier laying on the ground, so I immediately sprinted over to the soldier and started rendering aid,” she said.
Three of the five soldiers wounded in the shooting have been released, said Lubas, the commander of the 3rd Infantry Division and Fort Stewart. Two soldiers are still hospitalized but are expected to make a full recovery. One soldier is receiving treatment at the hospital on base and another soldier is at a hospital in Savannah, about 40 miles away.
Soldiers used their training to quickly stop the bleeding until ambulances arrived.
“When we spoke to the surgeons in the hospital, it was clear that the actions they took, primarily stopping that bleeding before they were loaded up into ambulances and quickly evacuated to Winn Army Medical, certainly saved their lives,” Lubas said.
The Army Criminal Investigative Division is investigating the shooting.
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