By DYLAN LOVAN and CLAIRE GALOFARO
Associated Press
LOUISVILLE, Ky. (AP) -- A 23-year-old bank employee armed with a rifle opened fire at his workplace Monday morning, killing four people -- including a close friend of the governor -- before being shot by police, authorities said.
The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee. That state's governor and his wife also had friends killed in that shooting.
Police arrived as shots were still being fired inside Old National Bank and killed the shooter in an exchange of gunfire, Louisville Metro Police Department Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a news conference.
"The suspect shot at officers," the police chief said, identifying the shooter as Connor Sturgeon. "We then returned fire and stopped that threat."
Nine people, including two police officers, were treated for injuries from the shooting, University of Louisville Hospital spokeswoman Heather Fountaine said in an email. At least three patients had been discharged.
One of the officers was shot in the head and underwent surgery, the police chief said. The officer, a 26-year-old who had graduated from the police academy on March 31, was in critical condition.
An emotional Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he lost one of his closest friends in the shooting in the building not far from the minor league ballpark Louisville Slugger Field and Waterfront Park.
"These are irreplaceable, amazing individuals that a terrible act of violence tore from all of us," the governor said of the victims.
As part of the investigation, police descended on a neighborhood about 5 miles south of the downtown shooting. The street was blocked as federal and local officers talked to residents. One home was cordoned off with caution tape.
A man who fled the building during the shooting told WHAS-TV that the shooter opened fire with a long rifle in a conference room in the back of the building's first floor.
"Whoever was next to me got shot -- blood is on me from it," he told the news station, pointing to his shirt. He said he fled to a break room and shut the door.
The 15 mass shootings this year are the most during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009, when 16 had occurred by April 10, according to a mass killings database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.