Parents of Louisville shooter say there was "no clear tell" before rampage, call for stricter gun laws
Less than three weeks after a gunman opened fire inside a bank in downtown Louisville, killing five people and injuring nine, the shooter's parents spoke out for the first time since the mass shooting in a "Today" show interview that aired on Thursday morning.
Lisa Sturgeon and Todd Sturgeon, whose 25-year-old son Connor Sturgeon was an employee at the Old National Bank and who was himself shot and killed while exchanging gunfire with responding police officers, said they were "heartbroken" and apologized to the families of the shooting victims.
But the parents primarily focused on raising awareness about how their child's turn to violence, even considering his long-lasting challenges with mental health, was unexpected, and called for changes to gun laws that could have made it more difficult for their son to legally purchase the assault weapon used in the mass shooting.
"We had no real indications that something like this could have happened," Lisa Sturgeon said in the interview. "There was no clear tell. So this could happen to someone else and we don't want that to happen ... that's why we're here."
The shooter suffered from panic attacks, anxiety and a suicide attempt in the years leading up to the shooting, his parents said. He was seeing a psychiatrist and a counselor, and had been prescribed medication for his symptoms. Lisa Sturgeon recalled her son describing a panic attack to her less than one week before the April 10 rampage.
"He called me on the Tuesday before the event. And he said, 'Well I had a panic attack yesterday and I had to leave work ... I don't know what it was but I think I should take off a while,'" she said, adding that, in general, "We thought he was coming out of the crisis" when the shooting actually took place.
The gunman's parents saw him in person for the last time on Easter Sunday, one day before the massacre. "He was fine," Lisa Sturgeon said.
But on the morning of the attack, the gunman's mother received a phone call from his roommate, telling her that her son had shared his plans to "go in and shoot up Old National." Lisa Sturgeon said her son had asked his roommate to call her, and that the roommate had found additional notes that the gunman left behind at home.
Lisa Sturgeon said her first thoughts after hearing from the roommate were "this cannot be happening."
"There's no way this is happening. Please stop him. Please make sure nobody gets hurt," she recalled. The gunman's mother was also surprised to learn that her son owned a gun. "Where did he get a gun? We don't have guns," she said.
The Louisville shooter had purchased the gun used in the attack, a semi-automatic AR-15-style weapon, legally during a transaction that likely took around 40 minutes to complete and cost about $600, Lisa Sturgeon said. His parents emphasized that they "absolutely" do not believe their son should have been able to make that purchase in light of his medical background.
"What we're hoping to do is stimulate some conversation around this," Todd Sturgeon explained. "I think the overwhelming majority of Americans don't want people in an impaired state to have a weapon in their hand."
"Now, it becomes more complex to thread the needle and protect us from those people while still being conscious of individual rights and liberties," he added.
The five people killed in the massacre at Old National Bank—Josh Barrick, Deana Eckert, Tommy Elliott, Juliana Farmer, and Jim Tutt—were the gunman's colleagues. They were fatally shot just two weeks after another mass shooting at an elementary school in Nashville, and as rising gun violence across the U.S. continues to drive public and political debate over how to address it.
"We have a concern about inadvertently being disrespectful to the families," Todd Sturgeon said on "Today."
Lisa Sturgeon apologized directly, saying, "We are so sorry. We are heartbroken. We wish we could undo it, but we know we can't."
