Army Honors Unarmed Soldiers Who Took Down Fort Stewart Shooter

The U.S. Army awarded medals to six soldiers who subdued an active shooter and quickly aided their wounded colleagues after a sergeant opened fire at Fort Stewart in Georgia on Wednesday.

At a press conference on Thursday morning, the Army honored First Sgt. Joshua Arnold, Master Sgt. Justin Thomas, Staff Sgt. Melissa Taylor, Staff Sgt. Robert Pacheco, Staff Sergeant Aaron Turner, and Sergeant Eve Rodarte for their heroism. The suspect is accused of using his personal handgun in the shooting. Fort Stewart prohibits personnel from carrying their own firearms at the base.

“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,” said U.S. Secretary of the Army Dan Driscoll.

“One of the soldiers tackled the person, so just think about this, 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 added. “Another soldier jumped on top of the person to subdue them until federal law enforcement arrived. The other soldiers, using their training that they developed over years and years, started to take care of mass casualties.”

The Army said that Staff Sgt. Turner was the first person to subdue the shooter before Master Sgt. Thomas jumped in to help pin him down. Turner is an automated logistical specialist from Farmington, New Mexico, who has been at Fort Stewart for less than a year.

The five victims are all expected to survive, and three of them have already been released from the hospital. One of the victims who remains in the hospital is expected to recover quickly, while the other victim has a longer recovery ahead, Savannah, Georgia, CBS affiliate WTOC reported.

The Daily Wire is not publishing the gunman’s name due to a company policy against contributing to the unintentional glorification of mass shooters.

The suspect was identified as a 28-year-old active-duty sergeant who enlisted in 2018. He had not seen combat and had no behavioral incidents that were known to the Army before the shooting. Brig. Gen. John Lubas said on Wednesday that the suspect was arrested for driving under the influence in May, an arrest that the Army’s top brass did not know about until after the shooting, when they entered the suspect’s name into a crime database. He was scheduled to be arraigned in the DUI case on August 20, according to KSBW Action News 8.

An investigation into the shooting remains ongoing, and the Army said it does not want to speculate about the shooter’s motives.