One person called after witnessing the shooting unfold on a video conference. Another woman called while hiding from the shooter in a closet.
They were among the 12 people who called 911 to report Monday’s deadly mass shooting at Old National Bank. The shooter killed at least five people and injured several others. The recordings released by the Louisville Metro Police Department Wednesday confirm many details communicated by officials about the shooting and paint a somewhat clearer picture of how it unfolded.
First caller saw shooting during a video conference
One call confirmed bank executives were in a meeting when the shooter entered and opened fire. The first call dispatch received was from a woman who was participating in the meeting through a video conference at a different bank branch. She witnessed the shooting on video and called 911.
“We were having a board meeting … with our commercial team,” she told the dispatcher.
She described the shooter as a white man with dark hair, in khakis with “maybe a rifle or a gun.”
“He was in and out of that room very quickly,” she said.
The dispatcher told her police were en route about four minutes into the call.
“We’ve got them coming,” he said, and explained that other people inside the building were starting to call.
Witness calls from inside closet
Several people called from inside the bank. One woman called from inside a closet in the conference room on the first floor. She was hiding from the shooter with one other person. She told the dispatcher eight or nine people had been shot and identified the shooter by name.
“He works with us,” she said.
LMPD redacted all names in the tape, including the shooter’s, and certain details about him.
In an 11-minute call, the dispatcher advised the woman to stay quiet. Multiple rounds could be heard firing in the background. The call ended when first responders arrived and the woman was rescued.
Police say the alleged shooter was Connor Sturgeon, a 25-year-old employee of Old National Bank. He was killed by police during a shootout.
Apparent shooter’s mother calls 911
The shooter’s mother was among the 12 calls LMPD released. Some details she gave were redacted.
“My son might be [redacted], and he has a gun, and he’s headed toward the Old National,” she told the dispatcher frantically. “He’s nonviolent. He’s never done anything.”
The shooter’s mother told the dispatcher she was getting information from her son’s roommate.
Asked by the dispatcher whether he had a gun, she said she “knows” he didn’t have any.
In the call she told the dispatcher she was getting in her car to head towards the bank, but the dispatcher advised her not to.
“I don’t want you to go to the location, we have a situation that’s going on down there right now,” the dispatcher said, adding that she’s already had calls from other people.
“So he’s already there?” his mother asked.
According to a spokesman for the mayor’s office, the shooter’s mother called at 8:41 a.m., after police had arrived on the scene.
Those officers, Cory Galloway and Nickolas Wilt, were both shot. Galloway was grazed in the arm before he shot and killed the shooter from his position outside the bank. Wilt was shot in the head and remains in critical but stable condition.
Some callers say they struggled to get through
At least two callers expressed difficulty getting through to a dispatcher when they called 911.
“Get here now!” one man calling from inside the bank urged dispatch. “You all don’t f------ answer!” The dispatcher told him people have already been calling and police are on their way.
Another caller said she had trouble getting through as well.
“I’m so glad I got ahold of you,” she said. “I kept trying to call 911 but it kept sending me to like, your voicemail, I guess.”
The woman told dispatch that five minutes earlier she had seen a man with “some type of assault rifle” walking around in a bulletproof vest near the Second Street Bridge and Main Street.
She described the man “jogging” east on Main Street “like he was trying to get somewhere in a hurry.”
Kevin Trager, with the mayor’s office, told LPM "there were no issues with communication” with dispatch. He said the first call came in at 8:36 a.m., and officers arrived three minutes later.
“They were fully staffed,” Trager said of dispatch. “They were taking a bunch of calls at once, and they were trying to communicate the information to the officers out in the field. Everything went the way it was supposed to go.”
Trager told LPM he would provide timestamps for all the calls later Wednesday evening.
