Army charges soldiers, one from Middle Georgia, in slayings of fellow servicemen

The U.S. Army has charged a midstate man and another soldier with murder in the March slayings of two fellow servicemen, one of whom was from Macon.

Spc. Phillip E. Thompson Jr., 24, of Warner Robins, and 24-year-old Sgt. Shaquille Craig, of Salem, Alabama, were charged earlier this week under the Uniform Code of Military Justice by the 3rd Infantry Division at Fort Stewart, according to the Savannah Morning News.

The men are accused of shooting and killing Spc. Marquez Brown, a 23-year-old a wheeled-vehicle driver from Macon, and 21-year-old Pvt. Malik Darion Jackson, a tank mechanic from Foley, Alabama, inside an apartment in Hinesville on March 5.

There had been a party at the apartment the previous night, but Jackson and Brown were seen alive by friends earlier that Sunday before an anonymous tip in metro Atlanta led police to the bloody scene a couple hundred miles away on March 8.

Brown, a former Southwest High School drum major, joined the Army in 2014 and had been stationed at Fort Stewart since April 2016. Jackson arrived at the base in October.

Jackson, “had his whole life in front of him,” his father told WCGL-TV. “He had recently joined the military, had a wife and son with another child on the way.”

WTOC-TV in Savannah reported not long after the killings that there appeared to have been an issue between Craig and Jackson that led to the incident.

This story was originally published August 17, 2017 at 9:06 PM with the headline "Army charges soldiers, one from Middle Georgia, in slayings of fellow servicemen."