A former U.S. Army sergeant will spend the rest of his life in a federal prison for killing another servicemember while the victim slept, the U.S. Department of Justice reports.
Byron Booker, 29, of Ludowici, Ga., was sentenced to life in prison by U.S. District Court Judge R. Stan Baker, the DOJ reported Feb. 2, for the June 17, 2020 stabbing death of U.S. Army Spec. Austin J. Hawk, 21 at Fort Stewart Military Reservation in Georgia. Booker had previously entered a guilty plea to premeditated murder of a member of the United States uniformed services, the report states.
A co-defendant, Jordan Brown, 21, of St. Marys, Ga., pleaded guilty in December to assaulting a U.S. servicemember involving bodily injury or a deady weapon, and to witness retaliation involving bodily injury, and is currently awaiting sentencing, according to the DOJ.
Court testimony shows Booker confessed to talking to Brown about "silencing" Hawk in retaliation for Hawk informing Army leadership that Brown had used marijuana. Booker and Brown entered Hawk's barracks room after midnight June 17, 2020, when Booker then "slashed and stabbed Hawk repeatedly with a sharp-edged weapon," the DOJ report states. Hawk suffered 40 separate stab or slash wounds, many of them capable of being fatal on their own, according to the medical examiner.
“This sentence represents a measure of justice for Austin Hawk, a man who was murdered for simply following the rules,” Keri Farley, Special Agent in Charge of FBI Atlanta, said in the report. “Hawk’s family and friends will never be rid of the pain this senseless murder has caused them, but hopefully it gives them some sense of resolve to know that Booker will spend the rest of his life in prison.”
Rusty Higgason, assistant special agent-in-charge of the Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division’s Southeast Field Office, said in the report that the "complex investigation" is exemplary of the tight coordination of Army CID, the Army Criminal Investigation Laboratory, FBI, and the Southern District of Georgia's U.S. Attorney’s Office.
“Byron Booker squandered his own military career by illegally using drugs, and then murdered a former fellow soldier in cold blood in retaliation for that soldier honorably performing his duties,” David Estes, U.S. Attorney for the Southern District of Georgia, said in the release.
“The sentence of life in prison with no parole will serve a measure of justice for Austin Hawk’s family, while affirming the outstanding investigative work that led to Booker’s conviction,” Estes said.
