April 10 (Reuters) – A bank employee armed with a rifle shot dead four colleagues and wounded nine other people at his workplace on Monday while livestreaming the attack in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, city officials said.
The attacker was fatally shot at the scene, the Louisville Metro Police Department said, but it was unclear whether from police gunfire or a self-inflicted wound.
The department identified the shooter as Connor Sturgeon, 23, who joined the downtown branch of the Old National Bank as a full-time employee last year.
In the latest in a long series of mass shootings in the U.S., police said they responded within minutes to reports of an attacker at about 8:30 a.m. (1230 GMT) at the bank office near Slugger Field baseball stadium.
Officers fired at the gunman, who was armed with a rifle, police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel told reporters. The attacker broadcast live video of his attack over the internet, she said.
Police identified the dead as Joshua Barrick, 40; Thomas Elliot, 63; Juliana Farmer, 45; and James Tutt, 64.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear, on the verge of tears, said during a news briefing that he knew some of the victims, including Elliot, a senior vice president at the bank.
“He taught me how to help build my law career, he helped me become governor, he gave me advice on being a good dad,” Beshear said. “One of the people I talked to most in the world.”
[1/4] People embrace after an “active police situation” that included mass casualties at Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky, U.S. April 10, 2023 in a still image from video. ABC affiliate WHAS via REUTERS
The nine people wounded in the attack were treated at the University of Louisville hospital, a hospital spokesperson said, including two police officers. One of the officers, a 26-year-old recent police academy graduate, was struck in the head and remained in critical condition after brain surgery on Monday, police said. Two other victims were also in critical condition.
According to the Facebook page of the shooter’s mother, Sturgeon grew up in Southern Indiana, which is just north of Louisville. The elder of two boys, he attended Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, where he ran track and played basketball for the team his father, Todd, coached. He enrolled as a business student at the University of Alabama in 2016.
The shooter worked at the bank as an intern for three summers from 2018 to 2020 before becoming a full-time employee in 2022 as a portfolio banker, according to a LinkedIn profile page. He had no prior contact with Louisville police, the police chief said.
“This was a targeted act of evil violence” Craig Greenberg, mayor of the city of 625,000, told reporters at the briefing. Greenberg said he was also friends with Elliot, who had worked on the mayoral transition campaign.
Mass shootings have become commonplace in the United States. So far this year, the nation has experienced 146 mass shootings — using the definition of four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter — according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.
In one of the most recent high-profile incidents, three 9-year-old students and three staff members were killed at a school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student on March 27.
In a separate unrelated incident hours after Monday’s attack, a man was killed and a woman injured in a shooting outside a Louisville community college, officials said.
Police said there were multiple suspects in the shooting at Jefferson Community and Technical College, about two miles (3.2 km) from the bank, who fled the scene and remained at large.
In response to the Louisville bank attack, President Joe Biden once again reiterated his wish that Congress pass legislation requiring safe storage of firearms, background checks for all gun sales and elimination of gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.
“How many more Americans must die before Republicans in Congress will act to protect our communities,” Biden, a Democrat, said in a statement.
Reporting by Brendan O’Brien in Chicago; Additional reporting by Gabriella Borter, Julia Harte, Timothy Ahmann, Ismail Shakil, Kanishka Singh, Rich McKay and Dan Whitcomb; Editing by Doina Chiacu and Jonathan Oatis
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.
