A 23-year-old man shot dead four people on Monday in a bank in the most populous city in the US state of Kentucky, including two friends of the governor, authorities reported, who said the attacker, a former employee of the entity, also shot dead.
other nine people were injured and were admitted to a Louisville medical center after the shooting at the Old National Bank building, the University Hospital of Louisville reported. Two of the injured were police officers, and one of them was in critical condition, the hospital added.
The shooting, which anti-gun violence organizations say is the 15th mass shooting in the United States so far this year, came two weeks after a former student fatally shot three children and three adults at a Nashville, Tennessee elementary school. . Friends of the governor of that state and his wife were also killed in that shootout.
Police arrived at the bank while they were still shooting and exchanged fire with the gunman, Louisville Deputy Police Chief Paul Humphrey said at a news conference. It was not clear if the shooter committed suicide or if officers shot him.he added, reported the CNN news network.
The city’s interim police chief later said the assailant’s name was Connor Sturgeon, 23 years old.
Police chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel also identified the other four dead: three men aged 40, 63 and 64 and a 57-year-old woman.
Kentucky Governor Andy BeshearEmotionally, he said he lost friends in the shooting. “This is horrible,” he said at the same press conference.
“I have a very close friend who did not survive. And I have another one that didn’t either. And one who is in the hospital and I hope he gets over it, ”he declared. The agents “without a doubt saved lives,” estimated, for his part, the mayor of Louisville, Craig Greenberg, at the press conference.
The mayor, who survived a shooting last year, denounced “a new episode of armed violence”. The White House said President Joe Biden had been informed of the shooting.
Later, the president returned to demand new legislation from Congress, after speaking of “senseless” deaths.
“Too many Americans are paying the price for inaction with their lives,” Biden wrote on Twitter. And she added: “When will Republicans in Congress act to protect our communities?”
According to CNN, Sturgeon had been told he would be fired. Apparently, the young man left a letter to his family in which he anticipated the attack.
Tens of thousands of people die each year in mass shootings in public places in the United States, an almost unique worldwide phenomenon that is attributed to the free carrying of arms in that country, protected by the Constitution itself.
According to studies, the country has more weapons than inhabitants: one in three adults has at least one weapon.