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As a subscriber you can listen to articles at work, in the car, or while you work out. Subscribe NowA Louisville bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace 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 country 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 160 miles to the south. That state’s governor and his wife also had friends killed in that shooting.
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.”
Sturgeon had worked full-time at the bank since 2021 as a “syndications associate and portfolio banker” and had three prior summer internships with Old National. Evansville-based Old National Bancorp. is the largest financial services holding company headquartered in Indiana.
Several media outlets reported that Sturgeon had been a standout athlete in basketball, track and football at Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, about 10 miles from Louisville. Sturgeon played high school basketball for his father, Todd Sturgeon, who coached at Floyd Central from 2014 to 2022 and the University of Indianapolis from 1998 to 2008.
Nine people, including two police officers, were treated for injuries from the Louisville shooting, University of Louisville Hospital spokeswoman Heather Fountaine said in an email. One of the wounded, identified as 57-year-old Deana Eckert, later died, police said Monday night.
One of the wounded officers, 26-year-old Nickolas Wilt, graduated from the police academy on March 31. He was in critical condition after being shot in the head and having surgery, the police chief said. At least three patients had been discharged.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he lost one of his closest friends in the shooting—Tommy Elliott—in the building not far from the 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 being a good dad,” said Beshear, his voice shaking with emotion. “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.”
Also killed in the shooting were Josh Barrick, Jim Tutt and Juliana Farmer, police said.
“These are irreplaceable, amazing individuals that a terrible act of violence tore from all of us,” the governor said.
It was the second time that Beshear was personally touched by a mass tragedy since becoming governor.
In late 2021, one of the towns devastated by tornadoes that tore through Kentucky was Dawson Springs, the hometown of Beshear’s father, former two-term Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear. Andy Beshear frequently visited Dawson Springs as a boy and has talked emotionally about his father’s hometown.
Beshear spoke as the investigation in Louisville continued and police searched for a motive. Crime scene investigators could be seen marking and photographing numerous bullet holes in the windows near the bank’s front door.
As part of the investigation, police descended on the neighborhood where the suspect lived, about 5 miles (8 kilometers) south of the downtown shooting. The street was blocked as federal and local officers talked to residents. One home was cordoned off with caution tape. Kami Cooper, who lives in the neighborhood, said she didn’t recall ever meeting the suspect but said it’s an unnerving feeling to have lived on the same street as someone who could do such a thing.
“I’m almost speechless. You see it on the news but not at home,” Cooper said. “It’s unbelievable, it could happen here, somebody on 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 in the back of the building’s first floor.
“Whoever was next to me got shot—blood is on me from it,” he told the news station, pointing to his shirt. He said he fled to a break room and shut the door.
Deputy Police Chief Paul Humphrey said the actions of responding police officers undoubtedly saved lives.
“This is a tragic event,” he said. “But it was the heroic response of officers that made sure that no more people were more seriously injured than what happened.”
Just a few hours later and blocks away, an unrelated shooting killed one man and wounded a woman 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 16 had occurred by April 10, according to a mass killings database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.
Going back to 2006, the first year for which data has been compiled, the years with the most mass killings were 2019 and 2022, with 45 and 42 mass killings recorded during the entire calendar year. The pace in 2009 slowed later in the year, with 32 mass killings recorded that year. The database includes incidents in which four or more people are killed.
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Ah, where are these elusive “good guys with guns”? We’re told any gun control would prevent them from saving us…but funnily enough, they’re hardly around now…hmmmm.
They’re present for every thwarted incident that, because someone stymied the shooter, doesn’t make national news.
You are aware that our propaganda industry’s best tool for deceiving the public is not to lie outright but to simply withhold critical details…right?
If you will remember, good guys with guns have been around several times in mass shootings, BUT they are not going to be every time. At the end of the matter, the only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun. Reasonable gun control is fine, but gun control will not stop criminals or even a lot of lunatics from getting a gun.
Prove it. Show me 5 times a “good guy” has intervened and saved the day. I’ll wait.
David L. – A recent time was the shooting at Greenwood Mall: Around 4:55 p.m. on July 17, 2022, the perpetrator of the attack, Jonathan Sapirman, a local citizen from Greenwood, walked a mile from his apartment to the mall, carrying a SIG Sauer M400 semi-automatic rifle, a Smith & Wesson M&P15 AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle, a Glock 33 pistol, and over 100 rounds of ammunition. He went into a restroom near the mall’s food court, and did not come out until an hour and two minutes later, at which point he started shooting.[3]
At 5:56:48 p.m. on July 17, 2022, the perpetrator began firing into the food court area of the mall.[4] He first shot and killed Indianapolis native Victor Gomez, who was standing near the restroom entrance. He then turned and fired at a nearby table, fatally shooting Pedro and Rosa Pineda, a married couple from Indianapolis. Sapirman then continued to fire at mall patrons, injuring a 22-year-old woman and a 12-year-old girl.[5][6]
Fifteen seconds after the shooting began, Elisjsha Dicken, a legally-armed 22-year-old man from Seymour, engaged the shooter in a gunfight. Dicken, a civilian bystander, was shopping with his girlfriend when the perpetrator opened fire.[7] From a distance of forty yards, Dicken fired ten rounds from a Glock handgun, hitting the shooter eight times. The shooter fired once, and attempted to retreat into the restroom, but instead fell to the ground and died soon afterwards.[8][9][10]
Afterwards, Dicken approached security guards at the mall, informed them that he had neutralized the shooter, and waited for police to arrive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwood_Park_Mall_shooting
The shooter had over 100 rounds of ammunition. How many more people would have been killed in that mall if Dicken had not been there? He is (and was described by the police afterwards) a hero.
Troy – this was described by law enforcement officers as one of the most impressive shots and situational awareness events they have ever seen.
Many police officers could not even have made these decisions and those shots in that situation…
It is considered to be a 1:1,000,000 event by the FBI…
It is a really really really bad example to try to argue the good guy with a gun logic…
Remember, bad guys don’t follow laws, they find ways around them.
Banks are likely “gun free” zones. Good guys follow the law … bad guys do not.
uh – you are just using words you have heard as bullet point talking points and blindly applying them incorrectly to a situation.
What is broken inside of you that we see a mass murder and your first response is to protect guns?
Frankie–what is broken inside of you that you see a mass murder and think the best thing to do is to make it harder for people to disarm people who would stop such a mass murder?
One of the big reasons you don’t hear about the “good guy with guns” scenario is because they’re so banal–so routine at thwarting crimes–and because “five people AVOIDED death thanks to an armed bystander” isn’t salacious news (and of course we usually can’t speculate how many lives were saved), we get the situations where the shooter was able to run rampant–usually because the good guys with guns couldn’t or didn’t stop things. Uvalde and Sandy Hook being fine examples.
The Nashville shooter (who is a victim herself according to quite a few wokies) deliberately chose the least armed and most vulnerable target within her radar, as she her self confessed. And still got her skull perforated within a matter of a minute or two, thereby preventing another Uvalde.
Are you really that naïve about human nature that you think bad people hellbent on mass murder would say to themselves, “Well, I want to shoot up a floral shop, but the laws clearly trying to stop me from doing this, so I guess I won’t.”
Really that naïve? Yes, I guess you are.
All the usual rhetoric here.
The good guys with guns thing is nonsense. Can you find a handful of cases to point to? Sure. However, the incidence of both finding someone carrying a gun that can help that is also trained to the point where they can be effective, is exceedingly rare. It’s also never going to be a statistically significant deterrent because there are quite a few people that don’t actually want to carry a gun around everywhere!! (Including teachers by the by)
The statistics on mass shootings when the assault weapons ban was in effect vs. since it has not been are striking and not disputable. It absolutely shows a direct correlation between the legality of these weapons and the incidence of shootings. It’s stark.
As it has been said though, the gun debate is over. Once we decided we were ok with so many kids at Sandy Hook having holes blown in them, not much more to say. Most would probably change their minds if it was their kids, but as long as its someone elses pesky kids, fire away.
Ryan S. – Sandy Hook is not an equivalent example because the gun laws DID work. The chain of events was 1) a gun store refused to sell to the shooter without the appropriate paperwork and 48 hour waiting period on Wednesday so 2) on Friday, the shooter just took the guns his mother had bought for them use at the range as a way to “bond”, and shot her in the face first then 3) went to the school because he knew there would be no guns there to stop him, then 4) shot himself once the police arrived. The logic of the mother to allow guns around a child who was challenged and allegedly hooked on violent video games was never questioned enough in my opinion, maybe because she was the first shot?
What’s even more interesting, is media quit covering the weeks old Nashville school shooting where 6 were killed, 3 being 9 year old kids. The Trans gender shooter and his-her manifesto, has to be down played by the media and the current Dem administration, while this crazy white guy gets his dead fame with full on nonstop media coverage. Political agendas seem to dictate what’s important and what isn’t.
Exactly. No broad categoric condemnation for the segment of the shooter. They pulled a couple ACLs trying to paint the murderer as a victim, but that had little traction and was moronic even for “journalists”, so they dropped the story and had to pivot. “Hey, did you see the bill at the Statehouse trying to limit children’s ability to mutilate themselves?!? Shame! Shame!”