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Five Soldiers Shot at Fort Stewart in Georgia, Suspect Apprehended; Suspect, a Male Army Sergeant, is Alive. Aired 2-2:30p ET

Aired August 06, 2025 - 14:00   ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

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[14:00:45]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And we do begin with the breaking news that we're tracking right now. We just learned moments ago that the gunman who shot five soldiers at Fort Stewart in Georgia is also an active duty soldier. The shooter, that soldier has been apprehended. Parts of the Army base do remain on lockdown at this hour. And the five soldiers who were shot are now in the hospital. What is unclear at this point in time is the extent of their injuries.

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN CO-ANCHOR OF "CNN NEWS CENTRAL": And we now have audio from first responders as the initial calls came in. Here's what that sounded like.

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UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Mag station 1, Mag Station 1, mutual aid request for a gunshot wound on Fort Stewart. It'll be building 84 22nd Brigade, 84 22nd Brigade, gunshot wound mutual aid.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: Medic 3 will be in route. 10-4 rescue 3. There's possibly 5 patients. They have both of their EMS trucks on scene. The scene is clear, everything is secure. We don't know who has what, multiple people injured.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

SANCHEZ: Fort Stewart is actually located some 40 miles southwest of Savannah and it is home to the third Infantry Division with over 10,000 soldiers and their families living there as well as civilian contractors. We're staying on top of the latest with our team of reporters. Let's go first to CNN's Isabel Rosales. So Isabel, what more are you hearing from officials?

ISABEL ROSALES, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Right. We're putting out those calls to get an understanding as to the extent of the injuries of these five soldiers. We know that they've been shot, but what is the urgency here? What is the seriousness of their injuries? Especially in light of a prior form of communication put out by the verified Facebook page of Fort Stewart earlier in the day, before we got this latest press release saying that they had reports of casualties. So, we're trying to suss out that information, figure out again how many people have been injured or worse there at the base.

But we know so far, confirmed five soldiers shot. Let me run you through a bit of the timeline here that we got from Fort Stewart. We know that emergency medical personnel, they were dispatched to treat those wounded soldiers roughly around 11:09 a.m. So that was 13 minutes after the shooting was first reported. All those soldiers, they were treated there on site and then taken away to a hospital for further treatment.

Now, law enforcement, they were dispatched once they first got the calls of this active shooter at the second Armor Brigade Combat Team complex. That was around 10:56 a.m. The installation, just eight minutes later, was put on lockdown. The shooter was apprehended by 11:35 a.m. So this would've been 40 minutes roughly since the shooting started. And that is a -- that is a big takeaway right here, that the shooter is in custody, meaning no more active threats to the community, to this Georgia Army base.

We also know that Fort Stewart lifted the lockdown of these main areas by 12:10 p.m. So, an hour and 15 minutes after the shooting happened. Now the second Armored Brigade Combat Team complex, that is still as far as we know, under lockdown.

Let me give you a little bit more information about where this shooting occurred. That second Armored Brigade Combat Team complex, this is part of the third Infantry Division which calls Fort Stewart home. This would be the unit that is training typically with heavy armored vehicles, things like armored tanks and mechanized infantry units. Again, that area is still under lockdown. And I want to leave you with this. Today is the first day of school for nearby Liberty County schools. This guy would've been where the children on base go to school from middle school on up. This would've been where they got -- went to school. They have been on a soft lockdown.

So the first day of school. We also know from reporting from the Associated Press that the Fort Stewart's three elementary schools that are on site, the elementary schools, they are still on lockdown. They would've had 1,400 students or so.

[14:05:00]

But again, we're making those calls to figure out the extent of the injuries for these five soldiers that have been shot as we get this new reporting from my colleague, John Miller, that the shooter is in fact a soldier.

KEILAR: Yeah, big news there, and no doubt a scary day for so many people there at Fort Stewart, though we did hear from Dr. Ben Watson, the State Rep who represents the area, that those schools are well away from the building that we're talking about. That's how he was describing this. So hopefully, that was something that helped the situation there for those kids.

I do want to bring in CNN's Natasha Bertrand, who is at the Pentagon. Natasha, this is, as Isabel was explaining so well there, as she's talking about this combat team, this Armor Brigade Combat Team. They are just part, a small part of what is a very large military base. Talk to us a little bit about that and a little bit about the second Armor Brigade Combat Team.

NATASHA BERTRAND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Yeah, I mean, this base spans nearly 300,000 acres. It is essentially a medium-sized city with about 10,000 active duty soldiers there and their families at any given time. And so this is a really massive complex here. It appears that this shooting took place in one particular area of that base, which as Isabel mentioned, is that second Armored Brigade Combat Team complex, where these are soldiers that essentially deal with heavy tanks, with armored vehicles, things like Abrams tanks. That's what they train on typically.

Now, we don't know if this soldier who carried out this shooting was part of that brigade or how involved they were with them and whether this was a targeted attack or whether it was a target of opportunity. But what we do know at this point, is that there are going to be a lot of questions here about how this individual was able to have a gun on this military installation. Because while it is a military base and probably the general public would expect that people are walking around with guns all the time, actually, they are typically very highly secured. Only military police are carrying around weapons on the installation at any given time unless, of course, soldiers are conducting training that requires those weapons. And in that instance, they are signed out of the armory, signed back in, they're pretty tightly controlled.

Now, that does not mean, of course, that they can't have illicit weapons on these campuses because military police, especially when you have a common access card, which allows you to access a military installation, if you are there on a daily basis, they aren't necessarily going to check every single vehicle coming in and out. And so, it is possible for soldiers to have illicit firearms on base. But again, all of these questions are going to be part of the broader investigation, how this person was able to have a gun on this base and whether any further restrictions are going to be put in place moving forward on how these kinds of weapons are checked for amongst these many, many soldiers and their families on this base.

SANCHEZ: Natasha, please stand by. We just got an update as she was bringing us that news that Ford Stewart, Wright Army Airfield and Evans Army Airfield are all clear as of right now, essentially. And also that we are going to hear an update from law enforcement on the situation at 3:30 p.m. So, in just about an hour and a half or so, we are expecting an update from officials. Let's actually go back to Isabel Rosales because, Isabel, you've learned some new information about this shooter who is apprehended.

ROSALES: Right. This is reporting coming from my colleague John Miller from a law enforcement official. We knew that the shooter is a soldier, but here's a new information. The shooter is an army sergeant. He is a male, he is alive and he is in custody. But it's important to note here that it is unclear whether this soldier is a soldier at Fort Stewart. But again, the shooter is an army sergeant. He is a male, he is alive, and he is in custody. That is according to a law enforcement official. Hopefully, we'll get more information on that at this 3:30 update that we're anticipating here from officials. Guys?

KEILAR: All right, thank you so much, Isabel. That's important to note, an army sergeant who is alive and he is also in custody. Let's bring in Chief Charles Ramsey and Ty Seidule, who's a retired U.S. Army Brigadier General. We have Juliette Kayyem, our CNN Senior National Security Analyst.

Ty, just to you. And of course, we're looking for more identifying information, which hopefully we'll be getting at 3:30 when law enforcement gives an update here. But what is your reaction, as you've seen so many of these sort of insider threat situations? An army sergeant, who is in custody right now.

BRIG. GEN. TY SEIDULE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Well, I think, thank you so much. My heart really goes out to this unit. I mean, they're the ones that lost four, killed in Lithuania when the vehicle fell into a bog earlier this year. They had two others killed in January at a rollover. It just -- it's so hard for a unit to lose people like this and to go through this kind of trauma. And the next thing I'm thinking about is, there are so many of these.

[14:10:00]

There was Fort Bragg in 2012, Hood in 2014, Pensacola and Pearl Harbor in 2019. And it's so easy to get weapons. So there are three ways to do these weapons. One is you get issued the weapon. That's what happened in Fort Bragg in 1995. Another way is you have a privately owned weapon that you bring on post and register, and lives in your home. And the third way is if you're a soldier in the barracks, you keep it in the arms room. So I think all these questions are ones we're going to have to figure out of where the soldier got it. But, it's terrible when it's an insider threat, somebody that's wearing the uniform, a leader in this case, and is going against some of his own. I feel just heartbroken for this unit and for everyone at Fort Stewart today.

SANCHEZ: Juliette, just thinking about the timeline and the news that we just learned, that within 30 minutes after officers were dispatched to Fort Stewart, they had the shooter apprehended. Now, we're learning that it's an army sergeant and that he is alive. What does it tell you about how this all played out?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So, we don't know the specifics of when the altercation or when the engagement happened, and whether he ran after or he was detained, or others around the soldiers who were victims detained him. So, we'll get a sense of the timeline. The lockdown happened as it should. You lock everything down until you know what's going on, and then you have the partial lifting of the lockdown because you want to get this community back to as normal as it can be.

The question I have now is about the victims, not simply what their injuries are. We still don't know exactly how bad the injuries are. I want to know from a motive perspective, were these known soldiers to the shooter? Did he work with them? Was there some complaints against them? Do they have characteristics, race, gender that might go to motive? And all of those are questions we have to ask now. Why these five? And what were they doing or how did they know him that would lead to them being shot? Because what we do know is that this soldier was not running around the barracks or the fort, and shooting indiscriminately. This was a very limited geographic area. So in terms of the investigation, that's what I hope to hear from next hour, is what are the characteristics of those five vis-a-vis the shooter.

SANCHEZ: And we are -- Juliette, if you could stand by for us, I want to bring in John Miller, our Chief Intelligence and Law Enforcement Analyst. You found out, John, that this was a soldier just a short time ago. We're learning this is an army sergeant, who is suspected of being the shooter in this case. Tell us a little bit about what you're learning.

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF INTELLIGENCE AND LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, we're learning he is a member of the military, member of the Army, a sergeant. And he comes from Jacksonville, Florida. He may be assigned to that base. But as Josh Campbell was pointing out before, there's a couple of ways to examine something like this when it's fluid. Is it an insider threat? Was it an outsider threat? If it was an outsider threat, how did they get on the base? How did they get through layers of security? How did they bring a weapon? Those things peel away now.

We're looking at someone who was likely assigned to that base, as Juliette points out, likely knew the people who are the victims in this case. That's not certain, but it's just as likely that he had intended targets because of the limited number of victims here and the fact that apparently, he was somebody who was authorized to be on that base. Questions still to be resolved, what was the issue behind this? What is the motive? This is an individual who is known to law enforcement from a couple of recent encounters. That could be a factor. It may be unrelated.

Right now, the FBI is sending a team from the Savannah Resident Agency to meet with Army CID, Criminal Investigative Division, to work on a joint investigation to peel back what do they have in terms of witnesses, what do they have in terms of who knows what the motive may have been, and what, if anything, the suspect is saying since he is in custody.

SANCHEZ: And speaking to that, Chief Ramsey, talk to us about the process of now trying to extract information from this individual and also what you make of the fact that he was known to law enforcement, even though John makes clear that it's not certain at this moment whether it was related to the shooting or not.

[14:15:00]

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, as far as the individual goes, who's in custody now, the sergeant, depending on whether or not, I don't know if John knows this or not. I know he is in custody, but was he injured at all during the arrest? Is he willing to talk? Because he does have Fifth Amendment rights where he may not talk. But they certainly will be interrogating him to try to find out more about him, the motive and so forth. Previous contact with police, under what circumstances? How did that happen? What was going on at that particular time? There's still a lot of questions in the general race that as to how he actually had access to a firearm. I would presume since he -- it sounds like he lives on the base, but how did he get access to a firearm? What kind of firearm did he have? Where exactly did this take place? When you played the tape from the 911 call, I'll call it, but the emergency center, and they were dispatching the medics and they said that the area where the wounded were was secure.

Well, that tells me that it is either a warm zone where they were able to get in there and actually provide some emergency medical, or he left that area after the shooting and he was apprehended somewhere else. So, there's a lot of information that we don't have right now, but I'm sure at 3:30 we're going to get filled in with a lot of detail. And John, you've done a great job in providing us with a lot of information that we probably would not otherwise have had.

KEILAR: Yeah. And let's just ask John, before we get in a quick break here, do we know anything, John, about the physical condition of the suspected shooter here?

MILLER: So we don't -- we don't know if he was wounded or injured in this, but that he is in custody and that he is not among the fatalities as far as we are told. And again, we're at a preliminary stage here, even still, because right now, until the FBI gets on the scene and takes over the law enforcement function, the people in charge on the ground are local law enforcement and the military. And it's -- they've been fairly guarded about things like number of victims and their specific conditions.

SANCHEZ: John Miller, thank you so much for the update. Everyone, please stand by. We're going to take a quick break. We'll be right back as we track this breaking news, a shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Five soldiers shot and we've learned the identity of the suspected shooter as an army sergeant.

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KEILAR: We are following our breaking news, a shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia. Five soldiers have been shot. We just learned a short time ago, the suspected shooter is an army sergeant who has had previous encounters with law enforcement. And let's bring in Al Williams. He's a Georgia State Representative who represents that area, Liberty County, which is where part of Fort Stewart is. And talk to us a little bit, if you are willing (ph), Representative, and we're incredibly sorry for what your community is going through. Talk to us a little bit about what you're learning and what you're thinking as you're finding out that the suspected shooter is an army sergeant.

REP. AL WILLIAMS, (D-GA): Well, thank you so much for having me. Certain -- our prayers, my prayers and the prayers of those who live in this district goes out to the family and -- the families that are involved. And certainly, we are very disturbed by this. This, the second Armored Brigade is one of the leading fighting brigades in the Army, and they train. It's very obvious that the Army was very prepared for the situation this morning by their quick action.

The Liberty County Sheriff's Office and Hinesville Police assisted. But, we've heard that there are, of course, five people have been shot. We don't know the seriousness of their injuries. We do know that two have been transported to Savannah for a Level 1 Hospital over there. We also know that the shooter was a sergeant. This is heartbreaking. I mean, these are the folks that protect us. And so, we're heartbroken by that.

But this community is very military oriented. We have the highest percentage of military connected citizens in the entire state of Georgia between retirees, those that are on active duty and their families and spouses. So it affects us. And so many of them leave out (ph). So there will be the relationships here and -- but we thank the Army for the swiftness of their actions to capture this person in less than an hour all of this was done. This is the way the Army operates here. And when you hit a fort like Fort Stewart, it's not long before the wrath falls.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. Representative, I wonder, I just want to clarify something that we heard you say, were victims that you're aware of transferred to Savannah?

[14:25:00]

WILLIAMS: Yes. I'm aware of two victims transferred to Savannah. And I speculate that it's because of the nature of the injuries, because that's a Level 1 Trauma Center when you go to Memorial Hospital in Savannah. And there have been two transferred over there.

KEILAR: And so, three to your knowledge were not transferred, is that right?

WILLIAMS: To my knowledge, three were not transferred, but treated at Winn Army Hospital. We're not certain whether they were admitted or not, but they were treated first on scene, then transported to Winn Army Hospital.

SANCHEZ: Yeah. That is important information to keep in mind as we try to gather the latest details on the status of these five soldiers who were shot. Representative, I wonder if you could paint a picture for us of what this community that you represent is like and specifically, its relationship with Fort Stewart.

WILLIAMS: Well, I've lived here all my life. Fort Stewart became a fort in 1941 and became a big part of this community as well as neighboring communities, and in Bryan County and Savannah, of course. The Army is involved in just about everything we do because there's so many people that live here in my district that are active duty and we train National Guardsmen from all over the state and from all over the south really. So, this community has the highest income from military presence of any fort or post in Georgia. Everything here is forted (ph), about 70 percent connectivity between the citizenry. So we're all shocked, we're heartbroken and we're hurt because of the great cooperation between this district and Fort Stewart. And we just changed command. So this is a new commanding general and a new garrison commander, but they hit the ground running and I'm sure as smooth as it went, there were just no gaps in what needs to be done out there. And we're grateful to know that our soldiers are protected like that, those who protect us that we care so much about. They go, they're first in battle. My people have been deployed so much since the Iraqi war. There's so many times and they do it. And to come home after surviving the terrors of war, to come home and be shot, not just shot but by a fellow soldier, disheartening is really an understatement.

KEILAR: Yeah. They're to protect each other. And the fact that this has played out, as law enforcement is describing it, this way is heartbreaking. Representative Williams, thank you so much for joining us. We do appreciate your perspective as you represent the area there that Fort Stewart is on. Ty Seidule is back with us, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General.

And General, even before we found out the identity of the suspected shooter here, we were asking questions about if it might be an active duty soldier, service member, because so often it is. When you look back at these shootings on military installations, it is almost always an active duty service member or a military contractor.

SEIDULE: Yeah, I mean, the Army has nearly 500,000 active duty and that's not including reservists and National Guard. There's a lot of people and there are a lot of young men. If we think about who -- the most majority of people that do these incidents, they're young men and the army just has so many of them. And it is crushing though to think about this, about Fort Stewart, because they have had so many difficult incidents recently. And to think about this one where you have one of your own, where you have a leader that perpetrates this kind of atrocity against his own people, it just -- it's both heartbreaking and infuriating because we know that this is going to hurt that unit. It's going to hurt everybody, not just the five, but it's going to destroy morale in that whole unit.

And just as that, as we just heard, it's going to take that new command team an enormous amount of energy to get them back and ready because I'm not sure where Second Brigade is going next, but remember they are always getting ready to go one of three places, either Eastern Europe, Korea, or Kuwait. They do nine-month appointments, then come back and get ready to go again. It's a tough time to be at Fort Stewart and this just makes it harder.

SANCHEZ: General Seidule, please stand by, as we continue to track the latest from Georgia, a shooting at Fort Stewart. Five soldiers shot, a suspect apprehended. The suspected gunman an army sergeant. These are live images of Fort Stewart. A lockdown there has been lifted and we are anticipating more information coming from officials within the next hour. Stay tuned to CNN. We'll be right back.

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