A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Five soldiers were injured in a shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia yesterday.
STEVE INSKEEP, HOST:
The alleged shooter is a fellow soldier and is in custody.
MARTÍNEZ: WABE's Emily Jones was at Fort Stewart right after the shooting. Emily, how did this all unfold?
EMILY JONES, BYLINE: Well, Army officials identified the alleged shooter as Sergeant Quornelius Radford. They say he opened fire on his co-workers at their place of work on post around 11 a.m. yesterday. The base was placed on lockdown shortly afterward. At a press conference, Brigadier General John Lubas, the commanding general of Fort Stewart, says other soldiers stepped in and tackled the shooter.
(SOUNDBITE OF PRESS CONFERENCE)
JOHN LUBAS: Soldiers in the area that witnessed the shooting immediately and without hesitation tackled the soldier, subdued him. That allowed law enforcement to then take him into custody.
JONES: That was around 11:35, they said, and then shortly after noon, the lockdown was lifted. Of the five soldiers who were shot, three of them did need surgery, but officials said they are all in stable condition.
MARTÍNEZ: The alleged shooter, what more do we know about him? Do we know maybe a motive?
JONES: Not much is known about the motive. Law enforcement is still talking with Radford. They did say that he was known to local police because of a DUI earlier this year, although his commanders did not know about that until his arrest after the shooting yesterday. Army officials say he worked in automated logistics, and he's been stationed at Fort Stewart since 2022. They also said he never deployed to a combat zone. And they did say that the soldiers he shot were his co-workers, and the gun he used was apparently his own handgun.
MARTÍNEZ: OK. So what does it say then about safety at the base? I mean, are there concerns about that?
JONES: That is the question, you know, the question of how he got his gun onto the base. While it is an Army base, typically only military police are wearing weapons. Soldiers really are not walking around armed. General Lubas, in the press conference, did reassure people that the base was safe and well guarded. And he said they are also looking into how this happened, and once there's a clear motive and more details, we may learn more.
MARTÍNEZ: I mean, Emily, I would guess that of all places that could protect from a mass shooting, it would be a military base. I mean, yeah, kind of hard to make sense of that.
JONES: It is, yeah. Again, they are well guarded. But there have been several mass shootings at military bases since 2009. That's when 13 people were killed in a shooting at Fort Hood in Texas. And then, since then, that same base had another mass shooting in 2014 with four fatalities and 12 people wounded. In 2013, 12 people were fatally shot at the Washington Navy Yard. And at Naval Air Station Pensacola, a man from Saudi Arabia, who was there for flight training, killed three soldiers in 2019. And that same year in Pearl Harbor, a sailor shot three workers, killing two of them. So there have been several mass shootings on military bases, and they do still happen sometimes.
MARTÍNEZ: All right. That's Emily Jones with WABE. Thank you very much for the update.
JONES: Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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