Body camera video released Tuesday by the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department shows two officers responding to a mass shooting suspect holed up in a downtown Louisville bank on Monday.
The videos were from the body cameras worn by two officers who took fire and were injured as they arrived at the scene on Monday.
Video from the body camera of Officer Nickolas Wilt, a rookie, ends before he is shot in the head as they advance on the building soon after arriving. His partner, Officer Cory Galloway, was grazed by a bullet and sought cover while trying to take down the shooter.
After a few minutes, Galloway takes the suspect down while calling for other officers who had just arrived to help Wilt as Galloway enters Old National Bank and approaches the downed suspect.
On Tuesday, Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey of the Louisville Metro Police Department led reporters through edited footage and still photos during a press conference. He commended the responding officers and noted that the video depicts the tension and the “stress that those officers are going through.”
“They did absolutely exactly what they needed to do to save lives,“ Humphreys said. ”Once officers arrived on scene, not another person was shot.”
According to a timeline provided by police, Wilt and Galloway arrived at Old National Bank at 8:41 a.m., three minutes after being dispatched. The gunman fired on them before they exited their vehicle.
According to Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg, it was crucial to release the video footage because “transparency is critical,” especially in times of crisis.
The victims received initial treatment and triage from the police and then were attended to by emergency crews.
Wilt was taken to the hospital and as of Tuesday, he was reported to be in critical but stable condition, according to Chief Medical Officer Dr. Jason Smith of the University of Louisville Hospital.
What the Video Shows
The video released by police includes footage from different sources, including the body cameras of the two officers and a video from a bystander. The video starts with Wilt’s body camera and then switches to Galloway’s camera before eventually showing the bystander’s video captured from across the street.“Back up, back up, back up,” Galloway shouts.
After Wilt backs up, Galloway retrieves a rifle from the trunk of the patrol car and asks Wilt to “cover for me.”Galloway was training Wilt, who had graduated from the police academy only ten days prior. In the video footage, the two officers are seen walking up a flight of stairs toward the bank’s glass front door when the shooter opened fire at 8:41 a.m.
At this point, Wilt’s body camera footage ends and the video switches to Galloway’s perspective. Wilt has been shot in the head, but he is blurred out in Galloway’s body camera video at this point.
Galloway takes fire, falls, and takes cover behind a concrete planter at the bottom of a different set of stairs leading to the building. A video taken by a bystander across the street, which police also released Tuesday, shows him darting back and forth behind the planter, trying to get a shot at the suspect.
Wilt is not visible in Galloway’s body camera video from this angle.
More shots from the gunman can be heard at 8:42 a.m. Galloway curses in frustration.
“The shooter has an angle on that officer. We need to get up there,“ Galloway says in the video. ”I don’t know where he’s at, the glass is blocking him,” he continues, referring to the suspect.
The police said that the shooter had set up an ambush position to target the arriving officers. Due to the elevated and glass front doors of the bank from the sidewalk, the officers were unable to see the shooter inside because of the reflection.
More officers arrive seconds before 8:44 a.m. and communicate with Galloway.
“He’s shooting straight through these windows, right towards the officer,” Galloway informs the other officers. He says they need to somehow pull Wilt “down from those stairs.”
Moments later, more gunshots ring out. Galloway juts out from behind the concrete planter but, frustrated, says he doesn’t have an angle on the suspect. After more shots are fired, Galloway shoots the suspect from his position at the foot of the stairs on the sidewalk just before 8:45 a.m., three minutes after arriving.
“I think I got him down! I think he’s down!” he shouts, before advancing into the building. Getting a better look, he shouts: “Suspect down! Get the officer!”
As depicted in the video footage, Galloway approaches the suspect, who is lying on the floor inside the lobby next to a long rifle, and shards of glass can be heard crunching under his feet.
The perpetrator of the shooting incident was identified by police as 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon. He was employed at the bank where the incident occurred.One still image obtained from surveillance video footage captured Sturgeon holding a rifle while wearing jeans, a blue button-down shirt, and sneakers. The photo showed him standing amid shattered glass within the building after he had already shot multiple individuals.
Sturgeon killed his co-workers, one of whom was a close friend of Kentucky’s governor. The victims were Joshua Barrick, 40, a senior vice president; Tommy Elliott, 63, also a senior vice president; Jim Tutt Jr., 64, a commercial real estate market executive; Juliana Farmer, 45, a loan analyst; and Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer.
The shooting was targeted but his motive is not yet clear. Sturgeon livestreamed the attack.
