On Thursday, a routine bank heist in Louisville, Kentucky turned into a dramatic hostage situation as police engaged in a shootout with the gunman who had taken an unknown number of hostages. Video footage of the incident has since surfaced, showing police under fire from the suspect, who ultimately died from gunshot wounds in a hospital. The incident has sparked controversy, with some questioning the police’s handling of the situation and use of force. In this article, we will delve into the details of the incident and the reactions to the police’s actions.
Newly released police body camera footage shows the horrific events that unfolded during a shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, where five people were killed and another eight were injured by a lone gunman. The footage, which was edited for public view, shows two patrol officers arriving at the scene and being fired upon before engaging the shooter. One of the officers was hit in the head by a bullet and injured. The footage also shows a still image from CCTV footage of the gunman holding a rifle inside the building, surrounded by broken glass from shattered windows.
The attacker set up an ambush position to attack officers as they arrived. Officer Corey Galloway’s body camera footage shows him perched behind a stairway outside the building, waiting for further support to arrive. When more officers arrived, gunshots followed, and Galloway fired back. He then shouted to say he believed the attacker was down. The footage then shows Galloway continuing to assess the situation and searching for the gunman while still suffering from a minor gunshot wound.
Louisville Metro Police Department’s deputy chief, Paul Humphrey, presented the footage to reporters during a news conference on Tuesday. Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said it was important to release the footage as “transparency is important — even more so in a time of crisis”. Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel praised the “heroic actions” of the officers who engaged the gunman without hesitation when they arrived. She mentioned that the attacker, who was killed by police, was a 25-year-old bank worker called Connor Sturgeon, who had purchased an AR-15 assault-style rifle at a local dealership on April 4.
Sturgeon killed his co-workers, including a close friend of Kentucky’s governor, while live-streaming the attack before police arrived. “We do know this was targeted. He knew those individuals, of course, because he worked there,” Gwinn-Villaroel said, though she did not give an explanation for his motive behind the shooting.
Two of the four wounded people still in the hospital had injuries that were not life-threatening. The shooting was the 15th mass killing in the US this year, coming just two weeks after a former pupil killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in Nashville, Tennessee. Governor Andy Beshear of Kentucky said he lost one of his closest friends in the shooting and praised the victims’ families and first responders.
“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 boss Jim Ryan said in a statement.
The mayor urged unity as the community processes its grief. “We’re all feeling shaken by this, and scared and angry and a lot of other things too. It’s important that we come together as a community to process this tragedy in particular, but not just this tragedy because the reality is that we have already lost 40 people to gun violence in Louisville this year,” Mr Greenberg said. This attack is another example of the ongoing issue of gun violence in the United States, with politicians and citizens resistant to agreeing on viable solutions to decrease the frequency of such incidents.
