Rory O’Neill, WOR National Correspondent Interview

Larry asks Rory what caused a sergeant stationed at Fort Stewart to snap and open fire killing multiple soldiers? Rory breaks it down. In addition to this story, let's get a check on which cities to buy a new home, and sell one.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Horrifying story. Yesterday just sent everybody to the TV sets
when there was a shooting at Fort Stewart. Anytime there
is a shooting in an army base, of course it
gets everybody's attention. This one was particularly horrible. But there's
really so many questions still, especially a motive for the

(00:21):
latest on this. Let's get right to Rory O'Neill, wor
National correspondent. He's with us every day at this time, Rory,
why don't you give us the latest? Are we anywhere
closer to getting a motive?

Speaker 2 (00:34):
Well? Maybe perhaps it's still being investigated, but this may
have been a personal grudge, a disagreement with a coworker
that started some of this. This twenty eight year old,
originally from Florida, witnesses say, followed his first victim into
a maintenance area of a building, shot that man in
the chest, and as other soldiers surrounding him responded, four

(00:58):
others were shot and before the gunman was taken into custody.
So that's five total injured, one of them with a
gunshot wound to the chest. Thankfully, all of them are
expected to survive. I think two of them just had
minor injuries. Two others had minor surgeries as well.

Speaker 1 (01:14):
Yeah, that is so amazing that there was no one killed.
Twenty five year old Sergeant Cornelius Radford is his name.
And how was he They said he had a personal gun,
And I know you're allowed to take your personal gun
on to the onto the premises, but how was he
able to take it into his barracks. I thought that

(01:36):
had to be locked away.

Speaker 2 (01:38):
Well, right, And that's also part of this investigation. You know,
you're not supposed to bring most personal firearms onto the base,
So that's a big part of this is to figure
out how this happened. We know he bought this glock
handgun a few months ago in Florida. You know whether
or not he bought it specifically for this purpose or
for something else, personal defense, whatever it may have been,

(01:59):
that's on investigation. The New York Times was able to
speak to the suspect's father. The dad says that his
son had put in for a transfer to leave Fort
Stewart and had also complained of being the victim of
racism there. Now we don't know if that's connected to
the shooting. We don't know if it's even true, but
at least that maybe one avenue that this investigation follows.

Speaker 1 (02:23):
When he said he was the victim of racism. So
he's a minority is what is he? Blackie? It doesn't
sound like an Hispanic name.

Speaker 2 (02:32):
No, the photos that we've seen sho he's African American.
And again we don't know exactly his race, and we
don't know if these allegations are true. Again it's secondhand
through his dad. So again it's part of the overall
broader investigation as to why this all happened yesterday. And again,
remember this shooter is alive. He was taken into custody

(02:55):
by the other soldiers without injury, arrested by police, and
then now being held in a jail there. But hopefully
with some interviews he might try to give some reasoning
behind why he did what he did.

Speaker 1 (03:08):
Where is he now and is he going to be
charged both under a military court and under a civilian court.

Speaker 2 (03:16):
And those are both open possibilities. So he's being held
At last report overnight, he was being held at a
facility there on the base. You know, whether or not
it comes to state charges for supposed federal charges or
just military charges, that's all of a bit of wait
and see as the prosecutors discussed the best avenue moving forward.
We heard from President Trump yesterday who said that he

(03:38):
wants this man prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.
But let's see what happens. He's served in the US
Army for more than seven years. He did not serve
or was not deployed to a combat area, no other
red flags in his past except for a recent DUI arrest,
and he didn't tell his superiors about that, so that's
also a violation, but no real red flags in terms

(04:01):
of mental health or other disciplinary problems.

Speaker 1 (04:04):
It is just such a shocking thing when this happens,
and I'm not sure why because you have young men
that are living together and there's weapons there, but it
really is rare. I mean, you hear about these once
every few years, and you might think to yourself, this
is going to happen all the time, but it's still
really shocking. And the one that's the thing that stands

(04:28):
out about this one, well, there's a few things that
are unanswered that we're going to get answers to, I'm
sure in the next couple of days, is how they
got him. The fact that people ran at him while
he was firing this gun and tackled him right.

Speaker 2 (04:42):
Obviously a lot of heroism on display right there, as
many of the soldiers. Again they weren't armed, but they
still ran toward the gunman to try to take him
down and try to you know, and what was a
terrible situation that caused the whole area to go on lockdown,
not just support Steward itself, but other parts of the

(05:02):
surrounding community. The nine to one one operator is even
being credited for asking for a community wide response in
an immediate call out for action, for a complete, full
police response to the scene for an active shooter. Not
because again the nine one one operator didn't really know
what was happening, but they were smart enough to say,
let's do an all all hands on deck sort a response.

Speaker 1 (05:25):
Rory O'Neil wr national correspondent with us every day at
this time. Thanks so much, Rory. Hopefully we can talk
about this again tomorrow and get still some more answers.
Appreciate your time, Thank you.

Speaker 2 (05:35):
Thanks Larry