Police Release 911 Call of Frantic Plea from Mom of Louisville Shooter: 'Oh, My Lord'
In a grim twist on Monday’s deadly mass shooting at a Kentucky bank, one of the people who called 911 to report the crime was the shooter’s mother.
Recordings of the calls were released by the Metro Louisville Police Department Wednesday.
The attack left five dead and nine others wounded. Police later shot and killed the assailant, identified as Connor Sturgeon, an employee of the bank.
In one of the calls, Lisa Sturgeon, the mother of 25-year-old bank employee Connor Sturgeon, told a dispatcher that her son “has a gun and he’s heading toward the Old National on Main Street here in Louisville,” according to a report by Fox News.
“This is his mother,” she said. “I’m so sorry, I’m getting details secondhand. I’m learning about it now. Oh my Lord.”
According to WAVE-TV, the caller went on to say, “I don’t know what to do, I need your help. He’s never hurt anyone, he’s a really good kid. Please don’t come at him.”
She added, “He doesn’t own guns. I don’t know where he would have gotten a gun.”
Later, she told the dispatcher, “He’s not violent. He’s never done anything …”
“OK,” the dispatcher responded. “And you don’t believe he owns guns?”
“I know he doesn’t own any guns,” the woman insisted, though she speculated that his girlfriend might have guns. (CNN reported that police said Sturgeon legally bought the gun six days before the shooting.)
“What do I do? Just go down?” the caller then asked, but the dispatcher emphatically discouraged the mother from going to the bank.
“No, I don’t want you to go to the location. We have a situation that’s going on down there right now. We’ve already had calls from other people, and I do not need you to go to the location at this time, OK? It’s dangerous there.”
The caller sounded upset by the news. “You’ve had calls from other people? So he’s already there?” she asked.
“Yes, at Old National Bank on East Main Street, we have,” the dispatcher confirmed. “And I’m advising you not to go to the location because it is an unsafe situation and officers are already at the location.”
WARNING: The following video recording contains conversations that some may find disturbing.
Another 911 caller on the police recording was a terrified coworker, hiding in a closet of the boardroom, describing the carnage in a whisper.
As she talked with the dispatcher, intermittent gunshots could be heard in the background.
Asked about the shooter, the caller said, “I know who it is. He works with us.”
Asked about her coworkers’ injuries, she responded, still in a low voice, “I don’t know. There’s a whole lot of blood.”
Another caller, one of the first to contact authorities, was a fellow bank employee from another branch who told another dispatcher she had been attending a meeting virtually when the horror unfolded onscreen.
“How do you know you have an active shooter on site?” the dispatcher asked.
Through hysterical sobs, she said, “I just watched it. I just watched it on a Teams meeting. … We were having a board meeting with our commercial team,” she said. “I saw somebody on the floor. We heard multiple shots and people started saying ‘Oh my God,’ and then he came into the board room.”
In a statement to WDRB-TV, the shooter’s family said the young man had been seeing a psychiatrist for anxiety and depression, but they were completely taken by surprise that he became violent.
“While Connor, like many of his contemporaries, had mental health challenges which we, as a family, were actively addressing, there were never any warning signs or indications he was capable of this shocking act,” the statement said.
They pledged their cooperation in the investigation “to aid everyone in understanding why and how this happened.”
“No words can express our sorrow, anguish, and horror at the unthinkable harm our son Connor inflicted on innocent people, their families, and the entire Louisville community,” the family wrote.
“We mourn their loss and that of our son, Connor. We pray for everyone traumatized by his senseless acts of violence and are deeply grateful for the bravery and heroism of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department.”
On Tuesday, officials released body cam video of two of the officers who were first to arrive at the scene in response to emergency calls.
One video shows rookie officer Officer Nickolas Wilt, who graduated from police academy less than two weeks earlier, rushing toward the scene, shortly before he was shot in the head. He remains hospitalized in critical condition, according to CNN.
The video shows his training officer, Cory “CJ” Galloway, falling to the ground after being shot, but he managed to take cover and return fire, killing the gunman.
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