Police are still investigating a possible motive for a shooting that left five dead at Old National Bank in Louisville, KY.
On Apr. 10, an employee at the Old National Bank in downtown Louisville opened fire at his workplace, killing five and injuring eight.
Interim Louisville Metro Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel identified the shooter as Connor Sturgeon, according to CNN. After the bank shooting, police killed Sturgeon in a shootout.
Police also identified the five deaths as Joshua Barrick, 40; Deana Eckert, 57; Tommy Elliott, 63; Juliana Farmer, 45; and James Tutt, 64. During the shooting, four died while Eckert succumbed to wounds after the fact.
Sturgeon injured eight others during the attack, five of whom sustained gunshot wounds. Among them was Officer Nickolas Wilt, 26, who graduated from the police academy on Mar. 31, just 10 days prior. Sturgeon shot Wilt in the head, leading him to remain in critical condition as of Apr. 13.
The shooting began just after 8:30 a.m., during an employee meeting prior to the bank’s opening time. Some employees, including bank manager Rebecca Buchheit-Sims, were in attendance through a video call.
“Shortly after the meeting started, the gunman, which is an employee, started shooting up the conference room,” Buchheit-Sims told CNN. “I witnessed people being murdered. I don’t know how else to say that.”
Officers arrived at the bank three minutes after the shooting started, Louisville Metro Police Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey told CNN.
Sturgeon live-streamed the shooting via Instagram. The police now hold the footage and took it off social media shortly following the shooting.
Sturgeon used an AR-15 semi-automatic rifle, a federal law enforcement source told CNN. The AR-15 is a common weapon of choice for mass shooters, including the perpetrators of the Sandy Hook, Aurora movie theater, and 2023 Nashville shootings.
Sturgeon interned at Old National Bank from 2018 to 2020, and became a full-time employee in June 2021.
“He was a really good kid who came from a really good family,” said an anonymous former classmate of Sturgeon’s. “I can’t even say how much this doesn’t make sense. I can’t believe it.”
In an essay posted to CourseHero in 2018, Sturgeon, then a student at University of Alabama, wrote: “My self-esteem has long been a problem for me. As a late bloomer in middle and high school, I struggled to a certain extent to fit in, and this has given me a somewhat negative self-image that persists today. Making friends has never been especially easy, so I have more experience than most in operating alone.”
At an Apr. 10 press conference, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear remembered one of the victims as a close friend. “Tommy Elliott helped me build my law career, helped me become governor, and gave me advice on being a good dad,” Beshear said. “He’s one of the people I talked to most in the world and very rarely were we talking about my job. He was an incredible friend.”
As of Apr. 13, there have been 148 mass shootings in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive. This statistic defines “mass shooting” as a firearm-related event in which “four or more people are shot or killed in a single incident, not including the shooter.”