LOUISVILLE – The shooting rampage at a bank here that left five victims dead began when an employee opened fire inside a conference room during a morning staff meeting, a manager at the bank says.
Rebecca Buchheit-Sims told CNN she was attending the meeting virtually on Monday and watched in horror as the shooting played out “very quickly” on her computer screen.
“I witnessed people being murdered,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say that.”
Officers responded to reports of shots fired at Old National Bank at 8:38 a.m., and within three minutes of being dispatched they arrived and exchanged gunfire with the attacker, who died at the scene, Interim Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a Monday briefing. Nine people, including two police officers, were wounded in the attack.
She identified the gunman as Connor Sturgeon, 25, and said he was livestreaming while shooting with a rifle. According to his LinkedIn profile taken down after the shooting, Sturgeon was a summer intern at the bank starting in 2018 and graduated from the University of Alabama, where he got both bachelor’s and master’s degrees by the end of 2020.
Sturgeon had been notified that he was going to be fired from his job at the bank, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN. The gunman left behind a note for his parents and a friend indicating he planned to carry out a shooting at his workplace, though it is unclear when the message was found, CNN reported.
SHOOTING WAS LIVESTREAMED:‘An evil act’: Louisville gunman was bank employee. Updates
Latest developments:
►911 tapes are expected to be released later Tuesday; the body cam footage is expected to be released Wednesday.
►CNN, citing a city official, said Instagram footage shows the rampage lasted about one minute before the shooter sat down in the lobby area and appeared to wait for police. The gunman was wielding an AR-15-style assault rifle, Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told CBS News.
►Officer Nicholas Wilt, 26, who graduated from the Louisville Metro Police academy less than two weeks ago, remained in critical condition Tuesday morning “but it’s looking hopeful,” Gwinn-Villaroel told WDRB-TV.
►Greenberg and other officials will hold a briefing Tuesday at 11:30 a.m. to provide updates on the tragedy.
THE KILLER:Who is the Louisville shooter who killed 5 people at bank? What we know about suspect, motive.
Louisville mourns again
The city’s downtown was the scene of protests in 2020, after police officers shot and killed Breonna Taylor, helping fuel the national outcry over the deaths of Black Americans at the hands of police. In Louisville, a city of about 633,000 that is a place of close-knit communities, Monday’s shooting once again sparked grief, anger and shock. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, who was born here, had choked back tears as he talked of losing a close friend in the bank carnage.
Barbara Hedspeth, a clinical social worker who attended a vigil for the victims Monday night, said the city’s connectedness seemed to amplify the pain.
“In Louisville, you’re one degree (of separation) away from anybody else,” Hedspeth said. Read more here.
– Chris Kenning
Chaos on the street: ‘You’d have thought Godzilla was coming’
Jon High was driving to Against the Grain, a downtown Louisville brewery across the street from the bank, at about 8:50 a.m. Monday. He encountered a crowd running toward him and away from the Old National Bank complex.
“You would’ve thought Godzilla was coming down the street,” High said outside the taproom hours later as Beshear spoke at a press conference inside. “I felt like I was in the middle of something and just didn’t know what, so that’s very scary.”
Kris King handles marketing for Against the Grain and was heading into work when he was stopped by someone near the business. “I said ‘I work here, I’m going to a meeting here. Can I just make a right turn?’ And he was like ‘Well, you can, but there’s an active shooter with an AR-15,” King said. Read more here.
Names, stories of shooting victims emerge
All five people killed at the scene were bank employees. Thomas Elliott was a senior vice president of commercial real estate at Old National Bank and a friend of Beshear. Juliana Farmer was a loan analyst at the bank, and Deana Eckert was an executive administrator who had worked in banking in Kentucky for 31 years. James Tutt, the commercial real estate market executive for the southern region at the bank, started with the company in January 2015. Josh Barrick was the bank’s senior vice president of commercial real estate for less than a year.
“Our hearts are heavy, they are broken, and we are searching for answers,” Barrick’s pastor, the Rev. Shayne Duvall, wrote on Facebook.
Learn more about the victims here.
– Keisha Rowe and Donovan Slack, USA TODAY NETWORK
‘HIGH QUALITY PERSON’:Governor’s friend among those community mourns after Louisville bank shooting victims
Mass shootings ‘becoming more frequent’
The nonprofit Gun Violence Archive tracks all mass shootings, defined as a shooting in which at least four victims are hit by gunfire. There have been 146 mass shootings this year – up 10% over the previous record year of 2021, said Mark Bryant, executive director.
One hundred days into 2023, there have been 15 mass killings – shootings in which four or more people were killed, not including the shooter – in the U.S., according to a USA TODAY/Associated Press/Northeastern University database tracking the killings. Only two times since 2006 has the U.S. witnessed more than 15 mass killings by April 10, according to the database.
“This is consistent with the overall trend that mass shootings are becoming more frequent,” said James Densley, co-founder of the Violence Project, a nonprofit research center. Read more here.
– Grace Hauck
