A Louisville bank employee opened fire Monday morning at his workplace with a rifle, killing five people “including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor” while live-streaming the attack on Instagram. officer said
the police Jacqueline Gwynn-Villaroel, chief of the Louisville Metro Police Department, said shots were still being fired inside the Old National Bank and that the gunman was killed in the exchange of gunfire. The city’s mayor, Craig Greenberg, called the attack a “sinister act of targeted violence.”
The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 260 kilometers to the south. The governor of that state and his wife’s friend were also killed in that firing. In Louisville, the chief identified the shooter as 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon, who he said was live streaming during the attack.
“It’s sad to know that this incident was there and caught,” he said. Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, said in a statement that it “immediately removed the livestream of this tragic incident this morning.” Social media companies have implemented strict rules over the past few years to prevent violent and extremist content.
They’ve set up systems to remove posts and streams that violate those restrictions, but shocking content like the Louisville shooting continues to slip through the cracks, giving lawmakers and other critics slipshod security and the technology industry for moderation policies. are encouraged to attack. University of Louisville Hospital spokeswoman Heather Fountain said in an email that nine people, including two police officers, were treated for injuries in the Louisville shooting.
One of the injured, identified as 57-year-old Deanna Eckert, later died, police said Monday night. One of the injured officers, 26-year-old Nicholas Wilt, graduated from the police academy on March 31.
The police chief said that he was in a critical condition after being shot in the head and undergoing surgery. At least three patients were discharged. Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he lost a close friend during the “Tommy Elliott” shooting at the building not far from minor league ballpark Louisville Slugger Field and Waterfront Park.
“Tommy Elliott helped me build my law career, helped me become governor, gave me advice on how to be a good father,” Beshear said, his voice shaking with emotion. “He’s one of the people I’ve talked to the most in the world, and very rarely did we talk about our jobs. He was a wonderful friend.”
Josh Barrick, Jim Tutt and Juliana Farmer were also killed in the shooting, police said. “These are irreplaceable, amazing individuals who were torn from all of us by a terrible act of violence,” the governor said. It was the second time since becoming governor that Beshear had been personally touched by a public tragedy.
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In late 2021, one of the towns devastated by tornadoes that swept through Kentucky was Dawson Springs, the hometown of Beshear’s father, former two-term governor of Kentucky Steve Beshear. Andy Beshear often visited Dawson Springs as a boy and spoke fondly of his father’s hometown. Beshear spoke as the investigation continued in Louisville and police searched for a motive. Crime scene investigators can be seen marking and photographing multiple bullet holes in the windows near the bank’s front door.
As part of the investigation, police descended on the area where the suspect lived, about 8 kilometers south of the downtown shooting. The street was blocked off while federal and local officials spoke with residents. One house was cordoned off with caution tape. Kami Cooper, who lives in the neighborhood, said she doesn’t remember ever meeting the suspect but said it’s an unsettling feeling that he lived on the same street as someone who could do something like that. “I’m almost speechless. You see it on the news but not at home,” Cooper said.
“It’s unbelievable, it could be here, someone in my street.” A man who fled the building during the shooting told WHAS-TV that the shooter opened fire with a long rifle in a conference room on the back of the building’s first floor.
Pointing to his shirt, he told the news station, “Whoever was with me has been shot, his blood is all over me. He said he ran into a break room and locked the door. Deputy Police Chief Paul Humphrey said the actions of the responding police officers undoubtedly saved lives. “This is a tragic incident,” he said. “But it was the heroic response of the officers that ensured no more people were injured than what happened.”
Hours later and blocks away, a man was killed and a woman wounded in an unrelated shooting outside a community college, police said. The 15 mass shootings this year are the most during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009, when they occurred through April 16, according to a mass homicide database compiled by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
Going back to 2006, the first year for which data is compiled, the years with the most homicides were 2019 and 2022, with 45 and 42 mass killings recorded throughout the calendar year. The pace slowed later in the year in 2009, with 32 mass killings recorded that year.
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