Less than 24 hours after releasing body camera footage from Monday’s shooting at Old National Bank, the Louisville Metro Police Department has released 911 calls made to dispatch leading up to first responders’ arrival.
On Wednesday, LMPD released the audio Wednesday on social media, which may be disturbing for some listeners. The released recording was a nearly 90-minute-long compilation of multiple callers and police dispatch audio.
“Transparency is important — even more so in times of crisis,” Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said in a statement as the audio was made public. “Today, we are releasing the 911 calls from Monday’s mass shooting. Parts of the audio have been redacted to protect the privacy of those involved.”
The released audio featured 13 911 callers, including multiple Old National Bank employees, witnesses from outside the bank and the mother of Connor Sturgeon, the 25-year-old who police identified as the shooter who killed five people and injured at least eight others.
The shooter was an employee at Old National Bank, and arrived at the scene Monday morning with an AR-15 rifle. He was killed by Officer Cory Galloway, who was one of the first officers on scene along with Nickolas Wilt.
The shooter’s mother called 911 to tell them she believed her son was heading toward Old National Bank with a gun, after receiving a call from his roommate who she said found a letter.
The first caller was an Old National Bank employee who told a dispatcher she was attending a morning meeting remotely when the shooting happened. Through tears and screams, she told the dispatcher she watched the shooting happen via the meeting feed and the video was still on as she called.
“I just watched it in a team meeting,” the woman said tearfully. “We were having a CEO board meeting with our commercial team.”
The second caller, hiding in a closet, can be heard whispering while gunshots are fired in the background. She told the dispatcher eight or nine people in the office were shot, and that there was an active shooter. The caller said she was with people who were injured.
“I know who it is,” the caller said of the shooter. The dispatcher asked the caller how they knew the person.
“He works with us,” she replied.
More gunshots rang out during the phone call, and the 911 operator advised the caller to “stay quiet.”
“We have everyone coming,” the operator said.
The second caller, in an almost 11-minute clip, repeatedly asked if emergency crews were on the way and where they were as more gunshots were fired in the background.
That caller said she did not know the extent of her coworkers’ injuries but that “she just saw a lot of blood.”
Cries of “help” were heard in the background as the dispatcher tried to comfort the caller and urged her to remain quiet. During that call, first responders arrived at the scene and the operator told the woman she would be hanging up.
In another released 911 call, a man is heard frantically alerting the dispatcher: “We have an active shooter in the building.”
“Get here now!” the caller said.
The caller told the operator 911 dispatchers hadn’t been answering the phone, to which the dispatcher responded they had already fielded multiple calls about the shooting.
Another caller, who said they had ran out of the Old National Bank building, told dispatchers that the shooter “shot probably 15 rounds” from what he thought was a shotgun. Public officials have confirmed the shooter used an AR-15.
The caller didn’t know how many people had been shot but said “there were probably 14 people in the room” where it happened.
“Please send people there fast, please,” he said.
Other witnesses outside of the bank building were also contacting 911 to report what they were seeing and asked if they should go on lockdown in their location, according to the released audio.
“I just got a phone call from my wife at 333 East Main Street (the Old National Bank building),” one man told a dispatcher.
The dispatcher asked if the wife was able to provide any description of the shooter and he replied no. She was crying, he said.
A caller from the 300 block of East Main Street said she could see an officer down, likely referencing Wilt, in front of the Old National Bank building and another officer was in front of her. Flustered, she seemed to have passed the phone to another person who told the dispatcher Wilt had not moved since he was shot.
“The one (officer) hasn’t moved since he’s been shot. … I can’t see him move at all and I’ve been watching him consistently,” he said.
Officers were initially dispatched at 8:38 a.m. and arrived on scene at 8:41 a.m., according to information provided by LMPD. Those two officers were Galloway and Wilt, who was stuck by gunfire as he approached the building.
The shooter fired on the officers at 8:41 a.m. and again at 8:42 a.m., according to police.
Police were shot at again at 8:44 a.m. and returned fire, according to police. They entered the building and confirmed Wilt had been shot at 8:45 a.m.
In calls with the dispatchers, police were told where gunshot victims were located within the bank. One person was in a conference room and another was in the bathroom on the first floor. Another person was “on the corner” on the first floor of the bank, the dispatcher said.
Several minutes later, another person with a gunshot wound was reported to the dispatcher.
At one point in the released audio, police thought a gunshot victim could have been on the third floor, but later learned that was not the case.
About half of the audio released Wednesday by LMPD came from emergency responders and dispatchers, which provided more detail on how first responders handled the situation.
Radio transmissions contained mostly initial calls between dispatchers and officers as they coordinated law enforcement response, and later fire and EMS responders who were taking victims to Slugger Field near the Old National Bank building.
“This is from an officer: We have an officer down in front of the building,” a dispatcher is heard saying in one clip.
After the shooter had been killed, officers worked to clear the building of any possible additional danger and tried to identify witnesses who were hiding. They also made efforts to get victims out.
According to the audio, investigators went to the 1500 block of Taylor Avenue in Louisville after the shooting and waited for a warrant to be signed for the property they were searching. They also waited for the location to be secured.
While police haven’t confirmed Sturgeon’s address, they did confirm they searched Sturgeon’s home. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives confirmed that investigators were in that block on Monday after the shooting.
As emergency responders transported victims, dispatchers instructed officials not to take patients to University of Louisville Hospital unless it was a level one trauma case. “Unless it’s level one trauma try not to go to UofL,” one official said on the audio.
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(Lexington Herald-Leader reporters Bill Estep, Austin Horn and Beth Musgrave contributed to this story.)
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