Police have identified 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon as the gunman in early morning's attack on an Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo / LinkedIn
Police have identified 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon as the gunman in early morning's attack on an Old National Bank in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo / LinkedIn
A Louisville bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace on Monday morning, killing five people — including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor — while livestreaming the attack on Instagram, authorities said.
Police arrived as shots were still being fired inside Old National Bank and killed the shooter in an exchange of gunfire, Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said. The city’s mayor, Craig Greenberg, called the attack “an evil act of targeted violence.”
The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the United States this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 260 kilometres to the south. That state’s governor and his wife also had friends killed in that shooting.
Multiple law enforcement teams arrive at a bank building after a shooting took place in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo / AP
In Louisville, the chief identified the shooter as 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon, who she said was livestreaming during the attack.
“That’s tragic to know that that incident was out there and captured,” she said.
Meta, the company that owns Facebook and Instagram, said in a statement that it had “quickly removed the livestream of this tragic incident this morning.”
Nine people, including two police officers, were also injured during the incident in Kentucky’s largest city.
According to the killer’s LinkedIn account, Sturgeon worked as a summer intern for the bank for three years before finally working as a commercial development professional in 2021 and a full-time associate and portfolio banker in 2022.
New details about Sturgeon’s background have started to emerge, alongside a chilling theory about what potentially drove his murderous rampage.
The killer graduated from the University of Alabama in 2020 with a master of science in finance, and was a star athlete in high school who allegedly suffered so many concussions he wore a helmet at basketball games, the NY Post reports.
An unnamed former classmate told The Daily Beast they wondered whether there was a connection between Sturgeon’s many concussions and the massacre, with the dangers of Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE) coming to light in recent years.
Louisville mass shooter Connor Sturgeon was a former star high school athlete who suffered many concussions. Photo / Facebook
CTE is a degenerative brain disease caused by repeeated head injuries, and those with the condition are susceptible to aggression, mood swings, depression and paranoia.
US football star Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder in 2015, was found to have had chronic CTE after he took his own life in jail in 2017.
Sturgeon’s father is a high school history teacher and former boys basketball coach at the University of Indianapolis.
According to the Louisville Metro Police Department, Sturgeon entered the bank at 8.30am before it had opened and began shooting.
Victims’ fight for survival
Details have started to emerge about how employees managed to escape the bloodshed, with one resident telling the New York Post workers fled the bank and sought shelter and safety at nearby businesses.
Those who were trapped inside the bank hid inside toilets and conference rooms.
“The bathrooms on our floor have keycode entry, so it was probably the safest place we could think of to hide,” bank worker Tammy Madigan told the Daily Beast.
“So the six of us went into the men’s room, turned off all the sound on our phones, tried to be as quiet as we could.”
Two people embrace outside of the bank building where a shooting took place in Louisville, Kentucky. Photo / AP
Madigan added that police evacuated the remaining workers out of the bank after the shooter’s death, with some glimpsing Sturgeon’s body on the first floor.
The five Louisville victims have been named as Josh Barrick, 40; Tommy Elliot, 63; Juliana Farmer, 57; Jim Tutt, 64; and Deana Eckert, 57.
The Louisville Metro Police Department (LMPD) reported there was an “active aggressor” in the city centre, near the Slugger Field stadium, shortly before 8.30am on Monday morning (12.30am NZT).
He reportedly walked into the bank complex with a rifle and then streamed the shootings online.
Law enforcement, ambulances, and public safety vehicles line the street at the scene of a shooting in Louisville, where four people were killed and at least nine other injured. Photo / AP
Witnesses told TV network WHAS11 they saw a man with a “long assault rifle” fire several shots on the first floor of the bank building.
“He just started firing,” one witness said.
“I didn’t see his face. We were in the conference room. Whoever was next to me got shot, their blood’s on me.”
Responding officers opened fire on the gunman, according to witnesses.
Footage from the scene appeared to show one of the building’s windows blown out with glass scattered on the ground.
A driver, only identified as Debbie, told local TV station WDRB she had stopped at the traffic lights just outside the bank when she spotted a man who appeared to be injured lying on the entrance steps. Then she heard gunfire.
“As we await more details, we are deploying employee assistance support and keeping everyone affected by this tragedy in our thoughts and prayers,” he said in a statement.
"I had a very close friend that didn't make it today."
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear makes emotional statement on the deadly mass shooting in Louisville that killed at least four and injured eight others. https://t.co/MtAZB9Pxcipic.twitter.com/OsNiCjiZW9
Of the nine people injured, three have now been discharged. However, one of the two injured police officers is in a critical condition, University of Louisville Hospital officials have told CNN.
Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said at a press conference that two of his friends had been killed and another injured in the shooting.
“This is awful. I have a very close friend that didn’t make it today, and I have another close friend that didn’t either”.
