The shooting rampage at a bank here that left five victims dead began when an employee opened fire inside a conference room during a morning staff meeting, a manager at the bank says.
Rebecca Buchheit-Sims told CNN she was attending the meeting virtually on Monday and watched in horror as the shooting played out “very quickly” on her computer screen.
“I witnessed people being murdered,” she said. “I don’t know how else to say that.”
Officers responded to reports of shots fired at Old National Bank at 8:38 a.m., and within three minutes of being dispatched they arrived and exchanged gunfire with the attacker, who died at the scene, Interim Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a Monday briefing. Nine people, including two police officers, were wounded in the attack.
She identified the gunman as Connor Sturgeon, 25, and said he was livestreaming while shooting with a rifle. According to his LinkedIn profile taken down after the shooting, Sturgeon was a summer intern at the bank starting in 2018 and graduated from the University of Alabama, where he got both bachelor’s and master’s degrees by the end of 2020.
Sturgeon had been notified that he was going to be fired from his job at the bank, a law enforcement source familiar with the investigation told CNN. The gunman left behind a note for his parents and a friend indicating he planned to carry out a shooting at his workplace, though it is unclear when the message was found, CNN reported.
