A sign for Fort Irwin National Training Center, in the Mojave Desert, southeast of Los Angeles. (U.S. Army photo)
An Army specialist at Fort Irwin National Training Center was sentenced Wednesday to 50 years in prison for the killing of a fellow soldier last year at the desert base in Southern California.
Spc. George Cornejo, 27, pleaded guilty to unpremeditated murder in the Oct. 28, 2024, killing of Spc. Andrew P. Smith, 27, according to the Army Office of the Special Trial Counsel at Fort Belvoir, Va. The office prosecutes charges of murder, kidnapping, and major sex crimes in the Army.
Smith was posthumously promoted to sergeant shortly after his death, the Army said.
Col. Larry Babin, the military judge in the case, accepted the guilty plea and handed down the sentence. In addition to prison, Babin ruled Cornejo be reduced in rank to private and receive a dishonorable discharge.
No details of Smith’s death were included in the statement Thursday from the Army on Cornejo’s conviction.
Both soldiers were assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, according to the Army. The regiment is the permanent garrison for the 966-square-mile Fort Irwin National Training Center, about 150 miles northeast of Los Angeles in the Mojave Desert. Army units rotate through the base for advanced training or before overseas deployments.
Cornejo was assigned to the 58th Combat Engineer Company, 1st Squadron, 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment, and served as a construction equipment repairer. Smith was a utility equipment repairer with the regiment, the Army said.
Military police went to Smith’s residence on the base on Oct. 28 and found the injured soldier inside. He was transported to Weed Army Community Hospital at Fort Irwin, where he was pronounced dead.
Cornejo, who is from Fontana in San Bernardino County, was detained the following day as part of the investigation. He was charged on Nov. 20 with murder. He was arraigned April 16, 2025.
A photo of Army Sgt. Andrew P. Smith, who was killed by a fellow soldier at Fort Irwin National Training Center in Southern California. (Coxe and Graziano Funeral Home, N.Y.)
Smith, whose hometown is listed by the Army as Rye, N.Y., enlisted in August 2021 and was assigned to duty at Fort Irwin in March 2022.
On Thursday, prosecutors issued a statement on Smith’s death.
“My heart is still heavy for the loss suffered by Sgt. Andrew Smith’s family,” said Maj. Joshua Mikkelsen, a prosecutor for the Sixth Circuit of the Army Office of Special Trial Counsel. “No court-imposed sentence could ever fill the void this tragic crime has created. Hopefully, this outcome can help the family move on to the next chapter of their lives as they rebuild without Sgt. Smith,”
A memorial service with full military honors was held for Smith at Gate of Heaven Cemetery in Hawthorne, N.Y., on Nov. 16, 2024.
An early November 2024 obituary for Smith, published online by Coxe & Graziano Funeral Home in upstate New York, said the soldier had been living in Bronx, N.Y., prior to the Army. It said Smith and his wife, Erika, were expecting a son they planned to name Luca.
“He was proud to be a husband, and even more so excited to become a father,” Smith’s obituary said.
Cornejo was held in pretrial confinement at the Naval Consolidated Brig at Marine Corps Air Station Miramar, while the Army Criminal Investigation Division handled the case.
The Army said Cornejo will serve his sentence at the United States Disciplinary Barracks, the American military’s only maximum-security prison, at Fort Leavenworth, Kan.
