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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
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Liam Buckler & Vassia Barba

Louisville shooting: Moment brave cops shoot Connor Sturgeon dead after bank massacre

This is the horrific moment evil Louisville bank shooter Connor Sturgeon gunned down five ex workers with an AR-15 before being shot dead by police.

Louisville Metro Police Department has released chilling bodycam footage of the 25-year-old opening fire at Old National Bank in Kentucky, US, using a weapon he bought from a local dealership a week ago, according to police.

Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey walked reporters through footage and stills at a new conference Tuesday.

One still image from surveillance video showed the shooter holding a gun inside the building, surrounded by broken glass. Police said he set up an ambush position to attack officers as they arrived.

Officer Corey Galloway’s body camera shows him perched behind a stairway outside the building after rookie Officer Nickolas Wilt was wounded.

He waits and as other officers arrive, more gunshots are heard and Galloway fires and then shouts that he thinks the shooter is down.

Humphrey said the video shows Galloway “continues to stay in the fight and try to assess exactly where this shooter is" after a minor gunshot wound while on the radio and "trying to get a good view of the shooter.”

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said it was crucial to release the footage because “transparency is important — even more so in a time of crisis.”

Offices responded to the scene within three minutes and can be seen exchanging gunfire with the shooter before he was shot dead by cops.

The bank employee killed Joshua Barrick, 40, Thomas Elliot, 63, Juliana Farmer, 45, James Tutt, 64, and Deana Eckert, 57 and left nine wounded during a targeted attack - including two police officers.

Hero Louisville Metro Police Department Officer Nickolas Wilt was shot in the head and remains in critical condition in the hospital.

Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said that bank employee Connor Sturgeon, 25, bought the AR-15 assault-style rifle used in the attack at a local dealership on April 4.

"It's looking hopeful," Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel told WDRB-TV about Officer Nickolas Wilt, who had graduated from training just 10 days earlier.

Armed with the rifle, the gunman shot dead a close friend of Kentucky's governor - while live-streaming the attack Monday on Instagram.

She said Wilt and other officers "unflinchingly" engaged the shooter at Old National Bank and stopped him from killing more people.

Police arrived as shots were still being fired inside the building and killed the shooter, Gwinn-Villaroel said.

"The act of heroism can't be overstated on yesterday. They did what they were called to do. They answered that call to protect and serve," she said.

Four of the injured remained hospitalised Tuesday - one in critical condition and three in stable but fair condition, the University of Louisville Hospital said in a statement.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said he lost one of his closest friends in the shooting.

"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, Juliana Farmer and Deana Eckert, police said.

"There are no words to adequately describe the sadness and devastation that our Old National family is experiencing as we grieve the tragic loss of our team members and pray for the recovery of all those who were injured," Old National Bank CEO Jim Ryan said in a statement.

Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg told WDRB-TV that his focus moving forward would be on trying to unify residents in the city.

"We can't let the targeted acts of evil violence that we saw yesterday in our city deter us from continuing on the path to make our city the vibrant, safe, strong healthy city that we all know it can be and all want it to be," he said.

An interfaith vigil will be held Wednesday evening and invited people to come to grieve and pray.

“This vigil will be to acknowledge the wounds, physical and emotional, that gun violence leaves behind,” he said.

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 (260 kilometres) to the south.

That state's governor and his wife also had friends killed in that shooting.

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