Fort Stewart shooter pleads guilty to aggravated assault charges but still faces attempted murder trial

Army Sgt. Quornelius Radford (U.S. Army)

FORT STEWART, Ga. — Army Sgt. Quornelius S. Radford said he was suicidal and seeking a shootout with military police officers when he shot his civilian boyfriend and four fellow soldiers during an attack on his Fort Stewart logistics unit in August 2025.

“My goal was to get in a shootout with the MPs and probably die,” Radford told the military judge, Army Col. Gregory Batdorff, in a courtroom on the southeast Georgia Army post on Tuesday during a hearing in which he pleaded guilty to domestic violence and aggravated assault charges.

But Radford, 29, insisted he did not intend to kill anyone.

Batdorff accepted Radford’s guilty pleas, which carry a potential 61-year prison sentence. Nonetheless, prosecutors in the case from the Army Office of Special Trial Counsel said they intend to try him on attempted murder charges, which carry a potential life sentence.

Last month, Radford’s attorneys announced he would seek to plead guilty to two charges of attempted murder, but they withdrew that plea before Tuesday’s hearing. Defense attorneys did not say why they changed their plea plans, but they said they did not have a plea deal worked out with prosecutors.

Radford’s court-martial trial on the attempted murder charges is scheduled to begin June 15 at Fort Stewart. Batdorff said he would withhold sentencing decisions — including on the charges Radford pleaded guilty to on Tuesday — until the completion of the trial.

Radford, in his first extended comments in court, told Batdorff he had been arguing with his live-in boyfriend, Raekwon Smith, the morning of Aug. 6, 2025, when he grabbed his personal Glock 19 handgun and headed to the headquarters of his unit, the 703rd Brigade Support Battalion of the 3rd Infantry Division’s 2nd Armored Brigade Combat Team.

Sgt. Quornelius Radford is escorted by military police into a booking room at the Liberty County Jail in Hinesville, Ga., Wednesday, Aug. 6, 2025. (Lewis M. Levine/AP)

The soldier intended to shoot two of his noncommissioned officers, he told the judge. But Smith, apparently intent on stopping Radford’s assault, followed him onto Fort Stewart in his vehicle. After exiting his car, Radford turned and fired a shot into Smith’s car, hitting him in the chest.

“I didn’t intend to harm him,” Radford said. “But I didn’t care if I harmed him.”

The soldier then walked into the 703rd headquarters building and entered 1st Sgt. Taniesha Jeter’s office, where he shot her once in the stomach before turning his weapon toward his platoon sergeant, Sgt. 1st Class Justin Jones, and firing once more. The round missed Jones and instead struck Staff Sgt. Luis Garza in the chest.

Radford testified he then fired a third shot from the office doorway when he heard a noise coming from the next room over. That round struck Staff Sgt. Arysa Friends in the arm and entered the side of her body, he said.

After firing those shots, Radford said he began jogging down a hallway and was startled when a door opened.

“I blindly fired a round into that door,” he told Batdorff.

The round struck the doorframe, sending shrapnel flying into Sgt. Abdulbakai Latifu’s face, leaving a permanent scar.

Radford was tackled and disarmed by other soldiers shortly after firing that last shot. Those soldiers received commendations the next day from Army Secretary Dan Driscoll.

All the shooting victims survived the assault, but Jeter’s injuries will force her to retire from the Army, officials said.

Radford told the judge he only intended to shoot Jeter and Jones, but he did not provide a motive for targeting the two noncommissioned officers beyond his intent to “cause a commotion to get the MPs to respond.”

“I intended to harm them,” he said. “I did not want to kill them.”

The others shot were not specifically targeted, he testified.

Radford enlisted in the Army in 2018 as an automated logistics specialist, according to the Army. He served at Fort Hood, Texas, and in South Korea before joining his unit at Fort Stewart in November 2022.

He has been held in pretrial confinement at Joint Base Charleston, S.C., since shortly after the shooting and will remain there until the trial, officials said Tuesday.