08 07 25 Former FBI Agent Brad Garrett discusses shooting at Fort Stewart in Georgia

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Now on Colorado's Morning News, you heard some of the
remarks from the press briefing just minutes ago the acts
of bravery as an army sergeant is accused of wounding
five soldiers in a shooting that took place at Fort
Stewart in Southeast George.

Speaker 2 (00:12):
That suspect reportedly used a personal handgun to open fire
on his coworkers. He was stationed there as an automated
logistics sergeant with the second Armored Brigade Combat Team. Joining
us now on the ka Comma Spirit Health Hotline. ABC
News Crime and Terrorism analyst Brad Garrett Brad, how rare
is it that a soldier will do something like this
at an army base against his fellow soldiers.

Speaker 3 (00:35):
Well, it doesn't happen every day, but it does happen.
I mean, like Fort Hood has had two different mass
shootings in the last twenty some odd years. You occasonally
hear about soldier A shootings soldier B on base or
sometimes off base. So I think maybe a more realistic

(00:57):
way to look at this is that is the population
that's typically in the military. It's usually male. We're talking
teenage years into early to mid twenties or training them
to fight as we need to for obviously for down
the road for adversaries. So I think the combination of

(01:23):
having all those young males together that are young, that
are impressionable, that are immature, is much like sections of
the rest of the country. I mean, the military is
a microcosm of the rest of us, and so you're
going to have a percentage of people to go sideways
to pick up weapons, like we discuss every day that

(01:44):
you experience in your city every day. So it's going
to happen in the military.

Speaker 1 (01:50):
Brad, is this a situation that you see both as
skilled gunmen and skilled by standards? I mean, out of
all the places mass shootings take place, military bases, you
have those people that likely know how to take out
the shooter and hopefully prevent a further tragedy.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Yeah, I think that part is exactly what you had.
I don't know about the skilled shooter part, but certainly
the skilled soldier reaction to him was impressive and clearly
clearly the right thing to do.

Speaker 2 (02:19):
Do we know why the soldier acted out.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
No, but I would look at this in the following way.
This strikes me as workplace violence that he goes brings
a weapon onto the base, which is illegal to do
his own personal weapon. Then he goes into his own
unit and basically shoots folks that he works with. You know,

(02:45):
is that not the classic guy who gets fired from
a factory, goes out to his car, goes home and
gets a weapon, comes back and shoots the boss or
other people. I mean, so it's going to be I
assume some grievance about that, but we'll have to see.
That's the Army and the FBI. I'm sure, well, if
they haven't already figured that out, they will at some point.

Speaker 1 (03:05):
You mentioned his personal handgun. Why is it so difficult
in order to restrict personal guns from military basis?

Speaker 3 (03:13):
So think about this that Fort Stewart has nine ten
plus thousand soldiers plus thousands of civilians that work there.
How in the world would you ever clear that many people.
There's thousands of people going through the front gate, both
into the base and out of the base, one in

(03:33):
particular into the base. You just couldn't do it. It's
not realistic. Could you set up some version of TSA
who you could, but nobody would ever get to work?
Can you imagine the miles of cars that would be
backed up just to do that. So none of that's
realistic and the military knows that. And so this boils

(03:56):
down to a very similar discussion always have about mass shooters,
in that if we don't know about them, we typically
can't stop them, right And clearly they didn't know about
this guy.

Speaker 2 (04:10):
I apologize for that. I wanted to follow up quickly,
and we'll wrap up with this. I know that when
you do mental health screenings or whatever protocols it is
to get into the military, you're into your former space
of the FBI. It may not cover reveal everything or
the shortcomings, for lack of a better term, that's somebody
applying for said roller trying to get into an agency
has But is this maybe an example too where there

(04:31):
needs to be more thorough vetting of these people entering
these roles and realms to see if there's maybe something
off with them mentally.

Speaker 3 (04:39):
Well maybe, But another way to look at that is
that the military have to me quotas every month to
keep up with the man pair of that they need
to run the military, And so are they going to
narrow it down so much that even little glitches they
see in people as maybe a minor concern statistically will

(05:01):
not turn into violence down the road. And the other
problem quickly is that people change. I mean, this guy's
been on the military since twenty eighteen or nineteen. What
has happened to him in the last seven years, the
flip of switch that wouldn't have been picked up back
when he was eighteen.

Speaker 1 (05:20):
ABC's crime and Terrorism analyst. It's Brad Garrett. Thank you
so much for your time this morning.