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US Bank Employee Shoots Five Colleagues Dead, Livestreams Attack

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Five people are dead after an employee opened fire at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky, in the US and livestreamed the attack on Instagram.

The shooting took place at the Old National Bank in the city centre at about 08:30 local time which is about 12:30pm on Monday in Nigeria

Police say the victims were aged between 40 and 64.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear has confirmed that a senior vice-president at the bank, Tommy Elliot, who he describes an incredible friend, was among the victims.

About nine others were injured including a rookie police officer who had graduated to the force just two weeks ago.

The officer was shot in the head and is still critical after brain surgery.

Police responded within three minutes, and fatally shot the attacker in an exchange of gunfire.

Louisville police identified the shooter as Connor Sturgeon, who joined the downtown branch of the Old National Bank as a full-time employee last year.

Sturgeon was an intern at the bank for three summers from 2018 to 2020 before becoming a full-time employee in 2022 as a portfolio banker, according to his LinkedIn profile page. He had no prior contact with Louisville police, the police chief said.

"This was a targeted act of evil violence" Louisville mayor Craig Greenberg told reporters at the briefing. Greenberg said he was also friends with Elliot, who had worked on the mayoral transition campaign.

It is not the first time that a gun rampage has been live-streamed by an attacker. The gunman who killed 10 people in a racially motivated shooting at a New York, grocery store in May 2022 had live-streamed his attack, as had the attacker who killed 51 people in the May 2019 at two mosques in New Zealand.

Mass shootings have become commonplace in the US, which has experienced 146 so far in 2023, the most at this point in the year since 2016. Those statistics use the definition of four or more shot or killed, not including the shooter, according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

In one of the most recent high-profile incidents, three nine-year-old students and three staff members were killed at a school in Nashville, Tennessee, by a former student on March 27.

President Joe Biden responded to news of the shooting by reiterating his wish that Congress pass legislation requiring safe storage of firearms, background checks for all gun sales and elimination of gun manufacturers' immunity from liability.

"How many more Americans must die before Republicans in Congress will act to protect our communities?" Biden said in a statement.


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