Return to Transcripts main page

CNN News Central

Five Soldiers Shot at Fort Stewart in Georgia; Suspect Apprehended. Aired 2:30-3p ET

Aired August 06, 2025 - 14:30   ET

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

[14:30:00]

BORIS SANCHEZ, CNN HOST: ... 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.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:35:00]

BRIANNA KEILAR, CNN HOST: All right, we are following our breaking news out of Fort Stewart, Georgia, where five soldiers have been shot. And according to authorities, the suspected shooter is a male army sergeant who was apprehended alive. We also learned as well of these five who were shot. And we should note here the timeline, 10:56, that's when law enforcement dispatched initially for a possible shooting and the shooter was apprehended about 40 minutes later.

We're learning about the victims as well. We just heard from a state representative talking about their condition.

SANCHEZ: Yes, the state representative let us know that to his understanding, two of those soldiers that were shot had been transferred to Savannah, where there is a level one medical center that gives us some insight, some understanding of the level of their injuries and their conditions. But we do await official confirmation from law enforcement, which we are anticipating will come in less than an hour.

CNN's John Miller, our chief law enforcement and intelligence analyst, is with us now.

John, a couple of things stood out to me from the last bit of information that you brought us from your sources. The most notable one, this suspect had had previous encounters with law enforcement. It's unclear exactly what those entail at this time, right?

JOHN MILLER, CNN CHIEF LAW ENFORCEMENT AND INTELLIGENCE ANALYST: So he's known to local law enforcement there. The most recent thing that we've been able to find a record of is a traffic stop back in May of this year that resulted apparently a stop based on a traffic violation that resulted in an arrest for driving under the influence.

Now, there's a key question here, which is, was that traffic stop out there outside the base by local law enforcement or was that a traffic stop by military police on the base, which, of course, would essentially mean more direct contact with the military in the disciplinary sense.

As far as the records we've seen, that was still pending in court.

KEILAR: And that is very interesting information to learn that there was an arrest for DUI. That's something that obviously would have potential implications, right, for the employment of an active duty soldier.

MILLER: It would. And Brianna, as you know, from your background in military affairs, you know, if you are speeding on an army base, if you run a stop sign, a red light and they -- and the military police stop you, they take these things extraordinarily seriously, particularly if you are a service member.

So we have to kind of pull back and ask a couple of questions here, which is sometimes a traffic stop or being a little over the limit is just what it is. Other times, it's the indication of problems going on in the background of someone's life that they are out drinking and driving.

Or you can turn that the other way around in this case, which is because that would be a severe breach of military discipline driving under the influence on a base if that is where it occurred. And we don't know that. That could have caused the kind of career problems, pressures, discipline that could have been one of the stressors behind an incident like this.

But that is speculative at this point, only to the extent we know that contact with law enforcement happened. The records show a person of the same name with the exact same date of birth of this 27-year-old army sergeant. So it's a pretty good indicator that he had that contact three months ago.

SANCHEZ: And John, I just want to confirm something you just shared with us. We have the age of this suspect. He's 27. Is that correct?

MILLER: He's born in '97.

SANCHEZ: Copy that. John Miller, please keep us posted with what more you are learning from officials.

We have a number of experts with us, including Chief Charles Ramsey, a CNN senior law enforcement analyst, retired U.S. Army Brigadier General Ty Seidule, as well as Juliette Kayyem, a CNN senior national security analyst. Thank you all for being with us.

Just Juliette, given what John just laid out, this previous traffic stop related to driving under the influence. He made an interesting point, given that it's unclear whether that was an indicator that there was something perhaps in the suspect's personal life that they were dealing with and that had gone awry. Or if this was simply, you know, a blip in the radar, an unfortunate incident in someone's life. How does law enforcement take all of this information about the

suspect's background and paint a picture that gives them an indication of a potential motive?

JULIETTE KAYYEM, CNN SENIOR NATIONAL SECURITY ANALYST: So the most important thing, at least at this stage, will be who the victims are.

[14:40:00]

I know I keep coming back to this point, but were they colleagues? Were they roommates? Had he trained with them? Had he been deployed with them? Do they have a characteristic of race or gender that may go to a motive? That to me is the most important thing at this stage.

Because while this is significant and scary, it's actually also quite limited. The suspect did not grab a bunch of guns and go shooting into the schools there or shooting into the residential homes.

And so from the law enforcement perspective, whether, you know, he may be speaking, you're going to learn motive that way. But if he's not speaking, it is going to be the characteristics, qualities, experiences of the five he targeted, whether random or that was some sort of unit, that will go to motive. And then, and then whether there was some triggering thing today that led to this moment.

I will say, as Brianna made clear, a DUI in the military will have consequences, much more significant consequences for an active service member than a civilian, even if it's just a first account. So the DUI may have had consequences later on that were impacting his career and, of course, mental well-being.

It's just important to note that, that it's not a mere DUI or only a DUI. It will have consequences under military rules that you wouldn't have in a civilian population.

KEILAR: Yes. And General Seidule, if you could speak to that, there's the issue of what precipitated this DUI here just a few months ago. And of course, then the fact that the DUI may have compounded whatever issue did precipitate the DUI.

Can you just speak a little bit about sort of your experience when it comes to the military and soldiers who encounter these situations and what it means for them?

BRIG. GEN. TY SEIDULE, U.S. ARMY (RET.): Sure. I mean, a DUI is very serious in military. And, you know, we give safety briefings every Friday telling people don't get a DUI. And what the ramifications of it are it's tracked by unit. So everyone has this enormous incentive not to have DUIs in your organization. And when it does happen, it usually goes all the way up the chain of command so that the post commander knows about it.

Then what could happen, you could get anything from nonjudicial punishment, which could lose rank, to separation from the Army, depending on the severity and what else happened there. And so it's very, very serious. So I think that goes back to who was the victims of this.

Was it something like what happened at Fort Bragg in 2012, where it was a senior officers who were adjudicating or was it junior -- other junior people? We don't know those, but a DUI is a stressor for everyone involved, including the family, that really adds to, again, we don't know motive. I don't want to speculate on that.

I just know what a stressor a DUI is for a soldier, particularly a sergeant, and what that could mean for his career.

SANCHEZ: Chief Ramsey, your thoughts given this latest nugget?

CHARLES RAMSEY, CNN SENIOR LAW ENFORCEMENT ANALYST: Well, there's a couple of things. First of all, I agree with Juliette trying to find a relationship between the victims and the shooter is going to be essential. But the other part of this is going to be information that they get from search warrants that I'm sure are being executed.

He had a DUI, so either has access to or he owns a car, right? So that would be one thing that would be searched. Where does he live? Is it an apartment? Does he live on the base? Is he off the base?

They'll be seizing computers. They'll be seizing cell phones, all those kinds of things to try to get as much information as possible that might lead them to a motive. So there are a lot of things that are going on right now that DUI may or may not be connected to the reason for the shooting. They'll certainly look into that.

But everything's on the table right now. You've got a living suspect here, which means there'll be a court proceeding of some kind. It'll take place in the future.

So the processing of the scene, the handling of evidence, all those kinds of things are going to be very, very important so that they don't have an issue when it comes to being able to use that evidence against the individual when the trial does occur.

KEILAR: All right. Chief, General, Juliette, if you could stand by for us as we are following our breaking news here.

Five soldiers have been shot at Fort Stewart in Georgia here just in the last few hours. The suspect has been apprehended.

[14:45:00]

Law enforcement are telling our John Miller it is a 27-year-old Army sergeant who had had encounters with police, including recently a arrest for a DUI after a traffic stop just in May a few months ago.

We're awaiting information from law enforcement, from the Army. They're going to be giving an update here in the next hour. We're going to get in a quick break. We'll be right back with more information as it's coming in.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[14:50:00]

SANCHEZ: We start with the breaking news, a shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia, five soldiers shot, a suspect in custody, an Army sergeant male, 28-years-old. He is alive as of this moment as we're learning new information from officials related to previous encounters that he had with law enforcement.

We have Chief Charles Ramsey and retired U.S. Army Brigadier General General Ty Seidule with us, as well as Juliette Kayyem. Chief Ramsey, I wonder as we're set to hear from officials here within the next 40 minutes or so, what questions you might have?

RAMSEY: Well, they'll fill in some of the blanks. I mean, we've learned a lot over time. I mean, he is a member of the military. He's a sergeant. We may learn more about the relationship between the victims and the shooter, like Juliette keeps referring to, which is critically important. A better timeline, perhaps, we will get during that period of time as well.

So, I mean, how he got to, like the general mentioned, I mean, how did he get his hands on the weapon? I mean, is this something he was authorized to have? Did he bring it into the base illegally, I'll say? Did he get it while on the base somehow?

I mean, those are questions that perhaps we can get answers to at this press conference. But we're learning more and more as time goes on, and I'm pretty sure that it'll be a pretty complete press conference with a lot of information.

You won't learn the identities of victims, possibly, but you will get some information around condition of victims. You know, you have to always be concerned about next of kin and family being sure that you don't provide any information that they don't have prior to any release of victim information.

KEILAR: Now, that's a very good point, Chief. And General, to the Chief's point there, talk about the possibilities for how this suspected shooter may have had a weapon there on base. You have detailed that there are a number of possibilities.

SEIDULE: Sure, there are a number of ways. The first way is that it could have been during a training exercise, could be on a range or something where they had access to both, you know, a M4 or a 9mm, and then the weapon, the ammo as well. I think that's less likely, but still possible.

The second way is if the person lives on post on the base, then they have to register their weapons when they have them there so that everyone knows.

The third way would be to, if they live on barracks, which he could as a young sergeant, then they're supposed to keep those weapons in the arms room of each unit. That seems less likely here again.

And the last way is that the person lives off post and then could -- would bring that weapon in illegally. But as someone else said earlier, they just don't check. If you have a common access card, you're not going to get checked at the base. They're not going to do those sorts of checks.

So any one of those ways is a possible way to get those on. And I think probably either he either had the weapon brought it from off post or had it on his own post thing.

It was probably his own weapon. But again, we don't know.

SANCHEZ: Juliette, one of many aspects that investigators are surely looking at right now, what are you anticipating from this press briefing?

KAYYEM: So we will definitely get a status report of the victims, which is obviously most important. We simply just don't know how they were doing, whether some have been discharged. We've certainly heard some have been moved to metropolitan hospitals. That's the most important thing, just to get a sense of what the, you know, basically what the what the pool of harm is, so to speak.

And then what they believe is the potential motive or background of the suspect. Again, I go back to why these five. This is, again, a shooter who did not do things that we generally equate with active shooters. This was not a -- doesn't seem to be a larger statement about the military's not running around going after anyone. This seemed a very specific number of people, perhaps specific because of who they were in relationship to him, in terms of his deployment.

That's just that's important to answer, because obviously the military, the Pentagon will have to assess what the response time was, how did the weapon come onto the base.

[14:55:48]

As well as are there larger issues here about violence that the Pentagon can learn from if this suspect did, in fact, have a number of criminal violations, including at least one DUI.

Were there signs that were not being picked up that ought to be picked up in this in this environment for the Pentagon?

KEILAR: Yes, it's a really interesting point that you bring up there, Juliet. You're wondering if he targeted someone, right? And I wonder as we've been discussing this DUI, which and again, this is we are hoping to learn more about this.

But what we've been discussing is how seriously the military would take something like that. So what would precipitate an individual like this suspected shooter getting a DUI and ultimately getting a DUI is then going to compound a problem as well. If this could create some sort of disciplinary action, you know, I guess your question might be, is that part of who he's looking at here?

KAYYEM: Yes, I'm wondering, we simply need to hear, but obviously, what sort of disciplinary actions was he under and who were the people who were serving it? You and I both know military justice systems and military discipline systems are very rigorous. They can also be very overwhelming.

And so I'm curious about where he was in that process, and whether that included a threat or a potential that he was he was going to be exited from the military, given we simply don't know what the other criminal violations were. So that's first.

And then, you know, I've been saying this, there's a pool of people who were shot. I want to know, as an investigator of these cases, did they have common attributes that would explain it? Did they serve with him? Did they train with him? Are they of a certain race, a certain gender? These are questions we simply don't know who the victims are. And so that is something that we need to find out as well.

What's that commonality to determine what kind of threat the Pentagon has more generally?

SANCHEZ: Juliette, Chief, General, thank you so much for the perspective and expertise.

We are going to take a quick break as we are awaiting the U.S. Army giving an update on the shooting at Fort Stewart. Five soldiers shot the suspect, an Army sergeant.

We'll be right back.

(COMMERCIAL BREAK)

[15:00:00]