A friend of the man accused of gunning down five fellow soldiers at the Fort Stewart army base in Georgia earlier this week recounted how the suspect had been repeatedly bullied for having a serious stutter, according to a news report.
Meanwhile, soldiers who acted swiftly to suppress the gunman and prevent the possibility of a much higher death toll were being hailed as heroes for their bravery in the terrifying moments after shots rang out on the sprawling military base on Wednesday morning.
The man in custody for the shooting, Sgt Quornelius Radford, 28, was relentlessly mocked and mimicked for his speech impediment, from the earliest days of his army career, NBC News reported on Thursday.
“He got bullied a lot. It was very bad to the point where he could barely talk,” Sgt Cameron Barrett, 28, a friend of Radford’s, said in an interview with the TV network.
No motive has been officially discussed in the aftermath of the incident, amid the criminal investigation, in which five service members were wounded by gunfire and rushed to the hospital, although they are expected to recover.
Another soldier who had worked alongside Radford earlier in his career said that the sergeant had also lost a loved one in a traffic accident in January, and had taken it hard. The suspect’s father has said his son complained of experiencing racism.
When initial reports that there was a shooting began to reach soldiers on the base south-east of Savannah, Barrett said to NBC that he messaged Radford to ask if he was all right, but did not get a response.
Meanwhile, Sgt Aaron Turner recounted to the Associated Press that he was helping lock down a supply warehouse at Fort Stewart when he saw a fellow soldier walking past, wearing a hooded sweatshirt over his uniform and holding a handgun – after shots had already been fired.
Instead of ducking for cover, Turner said, he approached the gunman and started talking – asking what he was doing there and where he was heading. When he got close enough, Turner grabbed the soldier’s gun and took him to the ground, where soldiers held him down until military police arrived.
“I was able to keep a cool head, but pretty much my training ended up kicking in,” Turner said on Thursday. “It wasn’t about my life at that point. It was about the soldiers.”
The US army secretary, Dan Driscoll, came to Fort Stewart on Thursday to praise Turner and five other soldiers for their quick actions in subduing the gunman to prevent further bloodshed and rendering life-saving aid to the victims. Driscoll awarded each of them the meritorious service medal.
“The fast action of these soldiers under stress and under trauma and under fire absolutely saved lives from being lost,” Driscoll said at a news conference afterward.
Authorities say Radford used a personal handgun in the shootings, not a service weapon. Fort Stewart officials have not said why he opened fire, citing the criminal investigation.
Radford worked as a supply sergeant assigned to the 703rd brigade support battalion of the third infantry’s 2nd armored brigade at Fort Stewart, the largest US army post east of the Mississippi River, and home to thousands of soldiers.
The battalion’s commander, Lt Col Mike Sanford, said on Thursday that he’s unaware of any problems with Radford or arguments that preceded the shootings.
“Right now, there’s no signs that there was an issue,” Sanford said in an interview.
Radford’s father, Eddie Radford of Jacksonville, Florida, said in an interview with the New York Times that his son had sought a transfer and complained to his family about racism at the base.
Radford, who is Black, texted an aunt shortly before the shooting and “said that he loved everybody, and that he’ll be in a better place because he was about to go and do something”, Eddie Radford said.
Sgt Carlos Coleman, who worked with Radford early on after the latter joined the army in 2018, also spoke to NBC about the man’s stutter.
“It was easy for those people to make fun of him for the way he spoke. After that, he really didn’t speak that much,” he said.
