Five people have died in a US bank shooting. In a live-streamed attack on Monday in Louisville, Kentucky, a 25-year-old bank employee killed five people and injured at least eight others before being shot and killed by police.
After initially reporting four fatalities, Louisville police said that a fifth victim, a 57-year-old woman, had passed away from her wounds.
The most recent mass shooting in the US was carried out by a white man named Connor Sturgeon, according to police, who also claimed that Sturgeon worked downtown at Kentucky’s largest city’s Old National Bank.
After receiving reports of gunfire in the bank at 8:38 am (1238 GMT), police were on the scene within three minutes. The suspect shot at officers, who returned fire and killed him, interim police chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel told an afternoon press conference.
“His weapon of choice was a rifle,” she said without specifying if it was an assault weapon of the kind often used in the massacres that have become tragically common in the United States.
Gwinn-Villaroel confirmed that the shooter, whose age was at first reported as 23 but later updated by police to 25, had broadcast a live video of the attack on Instagram.
A spokesperson for Meta, the social media app’s parent company, told AFP that it was “in touch with law enforcement and quickly removed the live stream of this tragic incident this morning.”
Although the suspect’s motivation was not immediately known, CNN reported that a law enforcement source said he had recently been informed that he would be losing his job.
According to Gwinn-Villaroel, three people, including a police officer who was shot in the head, are in critical condition.
According to the Louisville Police Department, one of those victims later passed away from her wounds, joining the other three men and one woman who were also killed in the attack and were all between the ages of 40 and 64.
One of the men killed, Tommy Elliot, 63, was a friend of the Louisville mayor and of the Democratic governor of Kentucky. The latter said he once ran a campaign out of the building where the shooting took place.
“Tommy Elliott helped me build my law career. Helped me become governor. Gave me advice on being a good dad,” Andy Beshear told the news conference, visibly shaken.
“He was an incredible friend,” the governor said.
This was the latest spasm in a gun crisis that has left more than 4,900 people dead of firearm-related violence already in 2023, according to the Gun Violence Archive.
President Joe Biden — who is pushing for lawmakers in Washington to break a years-long deadlock and take action against gun violence — voiced frustration after the latest “senseless” killings.
“Too many Americans are paying for the price of inaction with their lives,” Biden wrote on Twitter, adding: “When will Republicans in Congress act to protect our communities?”
The White House later said that Biden had spoken by phone with Beshear.
– Windows ‘blown out’ –
After five died in a US bank shooting, the incident triggered a massive police deployment outside the Old National Bank building.
CNN reported that some people had been able to take refuge in the bank vault and lock themselves in — contacting police from inside.
Fox affiliate WDRB cited a witness saying she heard multiple gunshots and breaking glass while in her car at an intersection near the site.
“Gunfire erupted, like, right over my head,” said the woman, who gave her name only as Debbie. “When I turned, I saw that one of the windows in the bank had been blown out,” she added.
The United States, a country of around 330 million people, is awash with some 400 million guns, and deadly mass shootings are a regular occurrence.
Republicans, fervent upholders of the right to bear arms guaranteed by the Constitution, have long resisted efforts to tighten gun laws. Even though there is widespread outrage over the frequent shootings, political paralysis persists.
Two Tennessee lawmakers were expelled from the state legislature last week after staging a floor protest calling for stricter gun control in the wake of a deadly shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, providing the most recent example of the impasse.
According to the Gun Violence Archive, which classifies such acts as incidents in which four or more people were shot or killed, excluding the attacker, the mass shooting that occurred in Louisville on Monday was the 146th of the year.
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