DStv Channel 403 Wednesday, 02 October 2024

Kentucky bank shooting death toll rises to five

LOUISVILLE - A 25-year-old bank employee opened fire at his workplace Monday in Louisville, in the US state of Kentucky, killing five people and wounding at least eight others in a livestreamed attack before police shot and killed him.

After an initial death toll of four, Louisville authorities announced in the evening that a fifth victim, a 57-year-old woman, had died of her injuries.

Police identified the gunman in the latest US mass killing as a white man named Connor Sturgeon and said he was an employee of Old National Bank, located downtown in Kentucky's largest city.

After receiving reports of gunfire in the bank at 8:38am, police were on the scene within three minutes. The suspect shot at officers, who returned fire and killed him, interim police chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel told an afternoon press conference. 

"His weapon of choice was a rifle," she said without specifying if it was an assault weapon of the kind often used in the massacres that have become tragically common in the United States.

READ: Four killed, 8 injured in Kentucky bank shooting

Gwinn-Villaroel confirmed that the shooter, whose age was at first reported as 23 but later updated by police to 25, had broadcast live video of the attack on Instagram.

A spokesperson for Meta, the social media app's parent company, told AFP that it was "in touch with law enforcement and quickly removed the livestream of this tragic incident this morning."

There was no immediate word on the suspect's motive, but CNN cited a law enforcement source as saying he had just been informed he was losing his job.

Gwinn-Villaroel said that three people were in critical condition, including a police officer who took a bullet to the head.

One of those victims later succumbed to her injuries, the Louisville Police Department said, adding to another woman and three men killed in the attack -- all aged between 40 and 64 years old.

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