Soldier with ties to Fort Bragg receives medal for actions in Fort Stewart shooting incident
Army Secretary Dan Driscoll presented 1st Sgt. Joshua Arnold with a Meritorious Service Medal for providing immediate aid to the wounded soldiers, including stopping the bleeding of at least one.
The other soldiers honored were:
Master Sgt. Justin Thomas of Kingwood, Texas.
Staff Sgt. Melissa Taylor of Winterhaven, Florida.
Staff Sgt. Robert Pacheco of Amsterdam, New York.
Sgt. Eve Rodarte of El Centro, California.
Sgt. Aaron Turner of Farmington, New Mexico.
Related: Who is Quornelius Radford? What we know about the Fort Stewart shooting suspect
'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 that accompanied the award presentations.
In an interview with MSNBC following the ceremony, Arnold said he was in a conference room at the unit when he heard a gunshot, then walked into a hallway filled with gunpowder smoke and heard someone say they'd been shot.
"I immediately helped the person onto the ground, put the soldier on the ground, and one of the medics, Staff Sgt. Taylor, had came up and immediately started providing aid to that soldier, and that's when the soldier told me someone else was shot," Driscoll said. In total, he said, Driscoll rendered aid to three of the five wounded soldiers until medics could take over.
When told he and the others were being hailed as heroes, the North Carolinian responded: 'I was doing my job ... As a first sergeant for these soldiers, my job is to take care of soldiers.'
What happened at Fort Stewart?
Officials allege that shortly before 11 a.m. on Aug. 6, Sgt. Quornelius Radford, 28, opened fire on his coworkers at the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion's company operations facility.
Fellow soldiers who witnessed the shooting tackled the gunman and subdued him until authorities arrived, officials said.
"These soldiers, without a doubt, prevented further casualties," Brig. Gen. John Lubas said.
Two of the injured soldiers were transported to a trauma center, and three were treated at the Winn Army Community Hospital on the base. One underwent surgery.
Lubas said a personal gun was used in the attack, not a military firearm. It wasn't clear how the gunman was able to bring the weapon through security and onto the installation, he said.
Radford is in pretrial confinement awaiting charges in the Liberty County Jail in Hinesville, Georgia, jail records show.
This article originally appeared on The Fayetteville Observer: Soldier from Fort Bragg honored for heroics in Fort Stewart shooting
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'The fact that the base was put on lockdown so quickly shows that the installation had practiced this kind of an event, and they knew what procedures they needed to implement in order to minimize the impact of this active shooter incident,' said Cedric Leighton, a retired Air Force colonel and CNN military analyst. 'The response clearly had been practiced.' The motive for the shooting was not known. A law enforcement official briefed on the case told CNN the shooter, identified as Quornelius Samentrio Radford, had a disagreement with one of the victims on Tuesday. He followed that coworker to a maintenance area and shot him in the chest before shooting four others on Wednesday. It's unclear what the disagreement was about. Law enforcement responded at 10:56 a.m. ET, according to a Facebook post from Fort Stewart Hunter Army Airfield. Less than 10 minutes later, the base was locked down. Emergency personnel were sent to treat the victims at 11:09 a.m., the post said. The unarmed soldiers who intervened 'prevented further casualties' by tackling Radford, allowing police to arrest him, said Brig. Gen. John Lubas, Fort Stewart's senior commander. The soldiers handled the scene like a 'battle drill,' according to Lt. Col. Mike Sanford, the commander of the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion. Active shooter training instructs soldiers on what to do before, during, and after shootings — including helping others evacuate, not moving the wounded, creating barricades and, as a last resort, using 'whatever means possible to overpower the subject to save further lives.' Military bases have strict regulations on the possession and storage of personal weapons. 'I'm not sure by allowing soldiers to carry their personal firearms with them in a professional capacity while they're doing their jobs prevents what happened at Fort Stewart,' Capovilla said. 'Our military personnel that live and work on military installations, by and large, I would consider them to be in highly secure and safe facilities.' The November 5, 2009, shooting at Fort Hood by an Army psychiatrist with radical Islamist beliefs forced the military to evaluate 'not just the tactical-level response that happened at Fort Hood specifically, but also the processes and systems and policies that were in place for the Department of Defense as a whole that could have led to what happened,' Mary 'Chris' Frels, deputy provost marshal for US Army North said one year after the shooting. After Fort Hood, Frels said, the military reevaluated its risk assessment process to consider both internal and external threats. A huge part of the training involves teaching service members to identify behaviors in colleagues who may be spiraling — which could be early warning signs of a potential 'insider threat.' The risk indicators range from declining performance rating to demotions, from threats of violence to suicidal ideation to criminal behavior. Authorities this week would not speculate about Radford's motives. He had not deployed to a combat zone and had no known behavioral incidents on his military record, Lubas said. The general acknowledged Radford was arrested on suspicion of driving under the influence in May. Radford's chain of command was unaware of the arrest prior to Wednesday's shooting, Lubas said. The suspect's father, Eddie Radford, told The New York Times he had not noticed unusual behavior by his son recently. He did not know what might have motivated the shooting, but said his son had complained about racism at Fort Stewart and had been seeking a transfer, according to the Times, which did not cite any specifics. CNN has reached out to Eddie Radford for more information. Fort Stewart declined to comment on the racism allegation and whether Radford had requested a transfer. 'The circumstances that led to the events today are currently under investigation,' a spokesperson for the 3rd Infantry Division told CNN. Authorities are unsure how Radford got his personal firearm through the base's high security before carrying out the shooting, although personnel with authorized access are typically not searched en masse unless an installation has increased its security posture in response to potential threats. Carrying personal firearms on base is typically prohibited. 'From a company, battalion, or brigade commander's perspective, I think it would be very hard to enforce good order and discipline if the soldiers were allowed to carry their personal weapons with them at all times,' Capovilla said. Radford had texted his relatives at least 20 minutes before he began shooting, his uncle, Joe Mitchell, told CNN affiliate WTLV: 'I just want y'all to know that I love y'all, and I tried my hardest to be the best I could be.' Radford's military career began in 2018. Around the same time, he started being bullied over his stutter, two former coworkers told NBC. Sneh Patel, an attorney who represented Radford during his DUI case, also confirmed to CNN that Radford 'has a stuttering condition,' although he wouldn't disclose much more due to client-attorney privilege, he said. 'He got bullied a lot,' Sgt. Cameron Barrett, who became friends with Radford during an Army training program, told NBC. 'It was very bad to the point where he could barely talk.' In a video training course by the Defense Counterintelligence and Security Agency, which handles security and risk management across the Defense Department workforce, the narrator warns: 'It is up to all of us to be aware of potential signs and report what we see. You are your organization's first line of defense against someone who could do harm.' CNN's Amanda Musa, Dakin Andone, Alisha Ebrahimji and Danya Gainor contributed to this report.
