Six soldiers honored for heroism at Fort Stewart

HINESVILLE — Sgt. Aaron Turner said he was working at Fort Stewart on Wednesday morning when someone told him a gunman was firing in a neighboring building.

Moments later as he was helping secure the post, Turner encountered someone familiar: Quornelius Radford. The fellow Army sergeant, Turner said, was wearing a hoodie over his uniform and carrying a Glock pistol.

Turner, who had previously interacted with Radford at the post, began speaking with him, hoping to de-escalate the situation. Turner remembers Radford responding that he should “go home” and saying the shooting had nothing to do with Turner or other soldiers and “that it was pretty much leaders” he was after.

When Radford tried to reload his pistol, Turner said, he grabbed the gun’s barrel and kept it aimed toward the ground until Radford could be subdued with help from other soldiers.

“We were trying to make sure we locked everything down, securing it,” Turner, 32, a slender California native told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution Thursday. “And then the next thing you know, he ended up walking through.”

Turner was among six soldiers honored with a Meritorious Service Medal Thursday for their heroic actions responding to the shooting. Some helped restrain Radford, according to the military, while others provided lifesaving medical care to the wounded.

“One of the things I can say unequivocally is that the fast action of these soldiers — under stress and under trauma and under fire — absolutely saved lives from being lost,” U.S. Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told reporters Thursday as the six soldiers stood near him. “They are everything that is good about this nation.”

Credit: AP

Credit: AP

Of the five soldiers who were wounded, according to the military, three were released from hospitals Wednesday. One remained at Winn Army Community Hospital and another was still being cared for at Memorial Health University Medical Center in Savannah Thursday.

Radford, 28, is an automated logistics sergeant assigned to the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team. He was booked into the Liberty County Jail in Hinesville, public records show. But he will likely be transferred to a military detention facility, according to the U.S. Army Criminal Investigation Division.

Radford’s father, Eddie Radford, of Jacksonville, Florida, told The New York Times his son had been seeking a transfer and had complained to his family of racism at Georgia’s Fort Stewart, where he had been stationed for several years. He added his son, who is Black, sent a text message to his aunt on Wednesday morning which “said that he loved everybody, and that he’ll be in a better place because he was about to go and do something.”

Radford also told the newspaper his son did not have a history of serious mental health issues, though he sometimes dealt with depression tied to the death of his mother, which happened when he was a child.

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Radford, according to the military, allegedly used a personal handgun in the shootings. Asked Thursday about screening for such weapons at the entrances to military installations, Driscoll said: “We absolutely will want to learn from this investigation. We do not want something like this to ever happen again on an Army base. If there are things to do to improve safety, we will take those steps.”

Officially called Fort Stewart-Hunter Army Airfield, the post is the largest Army installation east of the Mississippi River, covering 279,270 acres. It serves as the home for the 3rd Infantry Division, employs more than 25,500 people and provides an economic impact for coastal Georgia totaling $4.9 billion, according to the U.S. Army.

In addition to Turner, the following soldiers received a Meritorious Service Medal for their actions Wednesday: 1st Sgt. Joshua Arnold of Fort Bragg, North Carolina; Sgt. Eve Rodarte of El Centro, California; Staff Sgt. Robert Pacheco of Amsterdam, New York; Staff Sgt. Melissa Taylor of Winter Haven, Florida; and Master Sgt. Justin Thomas of Kingwood, Texas.

Taylor told the AJC she was checking email in her office Wednesday morning, when she heard a colleague shout about gunshots in their building.

When she peeked down the hall, Taylor noticed smoke and spotted a fellow soldier lying on the ground. She sprinted toward her wounded comrade, discovering he had been shot in the chest. Ripping off his uniform shirt and T-shirt, she applied pressure to stop his bleeding. Taylor kept him conscious until an ambulance arrived.

A former Army medic, Taylor said she wasn’t scared while the episode unfolded, adding her background in emergency aid helped her focus. During a previous military assignment in Hawaii, Taylor worked in an Army hospital emergency room for four years and learned how to treat various wounds.

“I had no medical supplies or anything with me …. I had my bare hands,” Taylor, 39, told the AJC. “I was covered in blood up to my elbows on both arms. There was no time for you to stop and put on gloves in a situation like that.”

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Arnold, one of the other soldiers honored, said he began yelling to alert others after hearing gunshots. He joined Taylor in rendering aid to the wounded troops.

“It was training that kicked in,” Arnold said. “You just go to work.”

Credit: HYOSUB SHIN / AJC

Officials have not identified the injured soldiers. The soldier remaining at the Army’s Winn hospital at the post is “doing very well” and is “in high spirits,” Brig. Gen. John Lubas, the 3rd Infantry Division’s commanding general, said Thursday. “We’re hopeful she may be released as early as this weekend.”

Lubas added “doctors are very positive” about the soldier transported to the hospital in Savannah, “but I think it’s going to take her a bit longer to recover.”

Dr. James Dunne, the Savannah hospital’s chief of trauma services and surgical critical care, served 22 years as an emergency physician in the military. On Wednesday, 11 years after retiring from the Navy, he was back operating on soldiers. He praised the troops and the base’s emergency responders who rushed to provide aid at the scene Wednesday.

“The military wrote the book on Triple C, or tactical combat casualty care,” Dunne said. “There’s no better group of people you want taking care of you, if you’re shot, than pre-hospital military people.”

— AJC staff writers Adam Van Brimmer and Taylor Croft contributed to this report.

About the Authors