CNN
—
About half an hour before work began, employees at the Old National Bank branch near the Ohio River in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, gathered. for the morning board meeting.
There were Thomas Elliott, 63-year-old senior vice president of the bank; Dina Eckert, 57-year-old administrative assistant; and Juliana Farmer, 45, who moved to Louisville two weeks ago to take a job as a loan officer helping her daughter, a single mother of four.
There was Joshua Barrick, 40, senior vice president of commercial real estate. And James Tutt, a 64-year-old commercial real estate executive and a big believer in the revitalization of the old town area where they worked.
In a minute, five bank employees will become victims of a purely American phenomenon – a mass shooting.
Monday morning’s rampage by a member of their own working-class family was especially personal for Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg: not only did he lose a close friend at Elliot, but he himself experienced a workplace shooting last year at his campaign headquarters.
“It’s painful,” Greenberg said, “for every family I know.”
Kentucky governor upset over losing friend in bank shooting
It’s a pain that extends far beyond the Indiana border city best known for hosting the famous Kentucky Derby and producing the legendary Louisville Slugger bat that is part of the national pastime’s history.
Another familiar piece of Americana is being played out, this time in one of the oldest cities west of the Appalachians. The attacker unleashes his rage on unsuspecting victims. Law enforcement agencies detain the shooter. the families of those killed learn that their loved ones will not return home. Authorities then show graphic footage from police body cameras and release frantic 911 calls from witnesses whose plaintive cries for help have become a chilling soundtrack to the everyday scourge of gun violence across America.
There are only 106 days in 2023. And the U.S. has already recorded at least 162 mass shootings, according to data G*n violence archivewhich, like CNN, defines a mass shooting as a shooting in which at least four people, not counting the shooter, are shot dead.
The mother of the shooter, 25-year-old Old National Bank employee Connor Sturgeon, was among those who called 911 on Monday.
Her son, she told the dispatcher, was on his way to the Old National Bank branch on East Main Street. According to her, he had a gun and apparently left a note found by a roommate.
“I’m sorry. I’m getting second-hand details. I’m learning about it now. My God,” Sturgeon’s mother said during an 911 call released by police on Wednesday.
“I need your help. He has never hurt anyone. He is a really good child,” insisted the mother.
“We don’t even have our own weap*ns. I don’t know where he could get a gun.”
The call was made at 8:41 am Monday morning.
“He never hurt anyone,” the mother said. Please don’t punish him.
It was too late. The first 911 call about the bank shooting came three minutes earlier. The attacker was already inside.
Did other people call you? So is he already there?
“Yes,” said the dispatcher.
Should she go to the bank, her mother asked. Stay away, the dispatcher advised.
Sturgeon was killed by police shortly after he fatally shot five bank employees and then shot at the police, wounding Officer Nicholas Wilt. A 26-year-old rookie police officer was shot in the head 10 days after graduating from the police academy. leaving him in critical condition. Seven more were injured.
“I just swore him in and his family was there to witness his path to becoming a police officer,” Jacqueline Gwynn-Villaroel, interim police chief, said of Wilt.
Eyewitness video captures chaos near Louisville bank shooting
As with many mass shootings, Sturgeon legally purchased his AR-15 type rifle before the attack, according to police. The semi-automatic rifle is the weap*n of choice for many mass shooters in the US and the most popular sporting rifle in the country.
The motive for the pogrom is not clear.
The shooting was broadcast live on Instagram, adding to the horror.
The shooter fired the weap*n inside the bank for about a minute and then apparently waited a minute and a half before police arrived, a city official said.
The livestream began with a highly visible AR-15 style weap*n.
“Good morning,” the bank employee said to the gunman.
“You need to get out of here,” the shooter told the woman in a live stream that was eventually taken down by Instagram parent company Meta.
The armed man then tried to shoot her in the back, but apparently the safety was on and the weap*n needed to be loaded, the official said.
After the shooter properly loaded the weap*n and removed the safety, the official said, he shot the worker. She was shot in the back of the shoulder and survived.
Listen to 911 audio from the Louisville bank shooter’s mother
The first 911 call came from a woman who worked at another branch of the Old National Bank. She witnessed the shooting on video.
“How do you know you have an active shooter on site?” the dispatcher asked.
“I just watched this. I just watched it in a Teams meeting. We had a board meeting,” she said. “I saw someone on the floor. We heard a few shots and people started saying, ‘Oh my God,’ and then he entered the meeting room.”
The caller was in trouble. She screamed and wept as she described what she saw.
Rebecca Buchheit-Sims, a manager at Old National Bank, later told CNN that she actually witnessed the shooting on her computer during a Microsoft Teams meeting.
“I saw people being killed,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say it.
another 911 caller whispered. She said she worked at a bank. She hid in the closet. G*nshots echo in the background.
“I know who it is,” she said. “He works with us.”
Someone else called 911. They were on the fourth floor of a downtown building, hiding under a table.
“We’re trying to get information about what’s going on,” the caller said.
Another caller to the police demanded: “Come here immediately! We urgently need someone!”
Caleb Goodlett got a call from his wife around 8:30 in the morning. She works at Old National Bank, he said. CNN affiliate WLKY. She locked herself in a bank safe and called him from there on the phone.
Goodlett also dialed 911. He works downtown and was on his way to the bank when the first officers arrived.
Vigil in Louisville for mass shooting victims
On the morning of his 10th day on the job, Wilt and his instructor Cory “CJ” Galloway drove to the Preston Point building on the riverbank, which has a bank on the ground floor.
It was 8:41 a.m. when their patrol car pulled up at the Old National Bank, across the street from Louisville Slugger Field, home of the Louisville Minor League Bats. The officers were dispatched three minutes before the shots were reported.
Shots rang out inside the building.
“Back, back, back,” one officer shouted.
The patrol car backed up slightly, according to a body camera video released on Tuesday. Some parts of the video were blurry.
Galloway took a rifle out of the trunk.
“Cover me,” he told his partner.
The gunman was waiting in the lobby of the bank. The officers could not see through the dark windows of the building.
In the CCTV photo, the shooter in a blue shirt, jeans and sneakers is holding a rifle. The floor is littered with broken glass.
Judging by the video, shots were fired in the background. Wilt was shot in the head as he ran towards the gunfire, police said. Wilt was seen following Galloway down the outer steps to the shore. He held his service pistol with both hands. The video cuts out before he is hit.
Galloway, who was also shot at, is on fire. He fell, got up again, and retreated to safety on the steps behind the planter. The officers say that they do not see the shooter and that he is shooting at the windows of the bank.
“The shooter has a point of view on this officer. We need to get up there. I don’t know where he is. The glass is blocking it,” Galloway said.
Sirens wailed in the background.
Galloway took cover and waited for reinforcements. From time to time he moved from one side of the concrete plantation to the other, aiming his rifle at the raised lobby and trying to get a shot.
“He’s shooting right through those windows right at the officer,” Galloway said when reinforcements arrived.
At 8:44 a.m., Galloway unleashed a hail of bullets on the lobby. Broken windows smashed out by the shooter allowed him to locate the shooter.
I think he fell! shouted Galloway. “The suspect has been shot down. Get an officer!
Galloway entered the building slowly through the broken lobby windows. He aimed his rifle as the broken glass crunched under his feet. Galloway then approached the shooter, who was lying on the glass-strewn floor next to his rifle. It was 8:45 a.m. Monday, four minutes after the officer had responded to another mass shooting in America.