A Louisville corner changed forever: How 9 minutes of terror unfolded at Old National Bank

The promise of a warm spring day hung in the air at Main and Preston streets the morning after Easter, April 10, as Old National Bank employees and other workers made their ways to their offices.

The sounds of gunfire would come later, and then the screeching sirens.

But not yet.

Old National Bank’s downtown office, on the first floor of the seven-story Preston Pointe building — the one with the sloping roof — shares the corner with Louisville Slugger Field. Three dozen stadium office workers drudged into work there after the Bats’ loss to the Indianapolis Indians the day before, while employees in the Against the Grain brewery connected to the stadium headed in for a meeting to start their Monday.

Across the street and catty-corner to the bank, a security officer at the RiverLink bridge tolling agency sat sipping coffee a coworker brought to him. On the same corner, the CEO of a technology startup walked past his manager’s office at CureTech and stopped to type a text message.

Meanwhile, two or three people were inside the Louisville Ballet office preparing for a class.

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Within the next hour, four bank employees would die next door and another person would be shot and die that night. A responding police officer would be shot in the head — among eight others left wounded — and a city would be left reeling in the wake of a tragedy too great, Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear would later say, for the human body or mind to bear.

All it took was nine minutes for the history of that street corner to be changed forever.

8:30 a.m.: 'Has anybody else reported this?'

Before any shots were fired, at least one woman on her morning commute saw the shooter. She called 911 to say that she thought she saw a man with an assault rifle and bullet-resistant vest jogging through downtown "like he was trying to get somewhere in a hurry."

“Has anybody else reported this?" she asked, after getting through to dispatchers at 9 a.m. "I hope to God I’m seeing things.”

At 8:32, Braydon Turner was a couple blocks away from his office at CureTech. He parked his car, walked inside and was chatting with company CEO J.D. Worley about a shared hobby – piloting planes – when they looked out Worley's office window and saw two men cross the road in a hurry, fleeing the bank's building.

Security guard Ken Watkins, sipping his coffee inside RiverLink, saw them, too.

"When we heard everything," Watkins said, "they were already on the street running."

8:36 a.m.: 'Oh my God, there's an active shooter there'

The first 911 call came from an Old National Bank employee who watched the shooting unfold over a Teams video meeting. Her voice was strained and distraught.

"Oh my God, there's an active shooter there," she said. "Oh my God."

She was at another bank branch across town and didn't know the address. Thirty seconds into the call, she confirmed: "333 East Main Street."

The shooter was in and out of the room quickly, she said. It was a white man with dark hair, maybe wearing khakis but holding a rifle, she said, too panicked to finish several sentences.

"I just watched it on a Teams meeting," she said as she answered the operator's short questions. "We were having a board meeting ... with our commercial team."

Four were killed on site, police said later: Josh Barrick, 40; Tommy Elliott, 63; Juliana Farmer, 45; and Jim Tutt Jr., 64.  Deana Eckert, 57, would die that night at the hospital.

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Watkins and two other workers at the RiverLink payment office took cover when they heard the gunfire. They were the only ones there.

"We didn't know how many bullets might come this way and hit the glass," he said.

Louisville Metro Police Officer Nickolas Wilt, on his fourth shift since graduating from the police academy, and his training officer, Cory Galloway, were dispatched at 8:38 a.m. They'd be there within three minutes.

8:39 a.m.: 'People have been shot'

Some of the shooter's coworkers were gathered in a conference room at Old National Bank.

A distressed man alerted 911 at 8:39 that his wife was hiding from an "active shooter in the building." Another call came from a man who escaped and took shelter at a dental office down the block called. He fled once he saw the gunman.

"People have been shot," he said, warning about 15 people were at the scene. "Please get people there fast. Please."

For 10 chilling minutes, a woman whispered on the line with a 911 operator as she hid with another employee in a closet of the conference room. Eight or nine people were shot, she said, identifying the shooter by name and pleading for police to hurry as loud bangs of gunfire echoed in the background.

The RiverLink employees stayed in their back office. They wouldn't fully emerge until after 9 a.m., but they peeked out of the window occasionally, Watkins said, "just making sure none of the action was actually coming this way."

8:40 a.m.: 'I couldn't actually believe what was happening'

At some point, the shooter left Old National's conference room and went to the lobby, where he continued firing. Police would say later that he "set up an ambush."

Worley and Turner became transfixed with the scene unfolding outside their CureTech window. Police were on the scene "immediately," Turner said.

Worley's first instinct was to pull out his phone and start recording video. But not Turner. He took cover in a hallway.

"I couldn't actually believe what was happening," Turner said. "I thought somebody was robbing the bank, you know? At first I was cool with watching, and then whenever they started shooting and everything I was like 'Oh my God, I need to not be by the window right now.'"

Wilt stopped the LMPD cruiser in front of Preston Pointe at 8:40, but he backed up immediately when gunshots from the building rang out. He parked, and emerged with a handgun as Galloway hustled from the passenger side to the trunk for a rifle.

The pair climbed the concrete stairs leading to the bank, Galloway in front. They came under fire. Wilt was hit in the head, Galloway was grazed on his left side.

"Is that shots fired?" the 911 operator asked the woman hiding in the conference room closet.

"We've got everybody coming, OK?" the dispatcher said. "Just stay quiet and stay where you're at."

8:41 a.m.: 'So he's already there?'

While Wilt lay bleeding at the top of the steps, the shooter's mother called 911.

The call started at 8:41. The mother told police her son's roommate said he "apparently left a note" and was heading to the bank. She asked the operator what to do.

"I need your help," she said. "He's never hurt anyone. He's a really good kid. Please don't punish him."

She repeatedly said her son did not own guns. She told the dispatcher she was getting in her car to head to the bank, shaking as she tried to get into the vehicle. But the dispatcher told her not to go — Main Street was already dangerous.

"You've had calls from other people? So he's already there?" she asked.

8:42 a.m.: 'The shooter has an angle on that officer'

After he was hit, Officer Galloway fell backward down the stairs and found cover behind a concrete planter to the left of the steps.

He couldn't see the shooter, who was at an advantage on higher ground and hidden behind the lobby's reflective glass.

"The shooter has an angle on that officer," the police radio blared. "I don't know where he's at."

No gunfire was exchanged for more than two minutes. Galloway bobbed from one side of the planter to the other to see the shooter, his partner still bleeding yards above.

The only sound on Galloway's body camera footage was heavy breathing and then the wail of incoming sirens.

8:43 a.m.: 'He's shooting straight through these windows'

A couple in a condo across the street from the bank called 911 at 8:43. They could see one officer down and another pointing a gun toward the bank. They said the officer who'd been shot hadn't moved since he'd been hit — but they could see more police coming.

A second police cruiser arrived, and two more officers used it for cover.

"He's shooting straight through these windows, right toward (Wilt)," Galloway told them as they passed behind him. He directed them to get a barrier in front of the shooter so they could rescue Wilt.

The two officers found cover behind another planter on the opposite side of the stairs. Then, an onslaught of fire, first from inside the lobby, rang out.

8:44 a.m.: 'I think I've got him down'

Galloway stepped to the right of the planter on his side, shouldering his rifle, and fired.

"I think I've got him down," he yelled.

Galloway took a moment at the bottom of the steps. "I think he's down."

Then, cautiously, he made his way up the stairs, crunching shattered glass beneath his feet as he approached the gunman's body by a door inside the lobby.

The two women inside the conference room closet, still on the line with 911, heard the gunfire.

"Is that shots fired?" the operator asked again. "Just stay quiet."

8:45 a.m.: 'Help!'

Across the street at CureTech, Turner started recording video just after Galloway shot the gunman.

Turner watched as Galloway walked up the steps, rifle raised. He watched as a slew of other officers ran into the seven-story building.

First responders found the two women in the closet within minutes.

"Help!" one repeatedly called from their hiding spot. Then, when they were found: "Oh my God!"

8:51 a.m.: 'You would've thought Godzilla was coming down the street'

Police began putting up yellow tape. Shooting victims walked outside the building in their business clothes, faces in shock.

In Turner's video, one woman emerged on wobbly legs. Two other women clung together, their arms over each other's shoulders, as they descended the stairs, a step at a time.

LMPD interim Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel was on the scene by 8:54 as officers swept the building.

Just before 8:57, a man on the fourth floor called 911 for a status update — "We're tucked under a desk right now," he said. The dispatcher told him to stay put as officers searched the building floor by floor.

The streets were filled with police, first responders, bystanders and people fleeing the building. Jon High, a manager at Against the Grain, said he saw "people running down the street in terror and fright."

"You would've thought Godzilla was coming down the street," he said. "I felt like I was in the middle of something and just didn't know what, so that's very scary."

9 a.m.: A sea of first responders and media

Slugger Field turned into an impromptu emergency hospital room for the wounded. Those who were physically unscathed reunited with their loved ones at the Kentucky International Convention Center a few blocks away.

The block near Preston and Main would remain on lockdown.

At 9:02, a caller who "literally had to get out of the car and run" during the shootout asked if police knew when she could return to her vehicle on Main Street.

But the corner was still an active crime scene, the dispatcher said. "Accessing your car is just probably not possible at this moment."

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Watkins and his two coworkers at RiverLink emerged to a sea of first responders and media.

The Louisville Ballet shut down for the day, Ballet Master Harald Uwe Kern said. One employee stayed to help victims.

Turner and Worley spent the rest of their day with investigators, as key witnesses to the events.

Traffic wouldn't reopen for hours, and national media would be on the scene for days.

The aftermath

In the days after the shooting, mourners gathered at the corner, and others left tributes.

On Tuesday, a woman was seen hanging out a car window, sobbing and yelling: "I love you mom."

Louisville Ballet dancers met as a group with a counselor Wednesday morning. Like the rest of the city, they are grieving.

The shattered glass in and around Preston Pointe’s lobby was swept up. New window panels were being installed.

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A makeshift memorial was in place behind yellow caution tape on the same steps where police had encountered the gunman. There were five white crosses — one for each slain victim — and bouquets of flowers.

Someday soon, the last of the TV cameras stationed on the corner will be packed up, and the reporters will leave. The yellow tape will disappear and the flowers taken away.

Some workers have returned to their offices on that corner already. More will trickle back in the weeks ahead.

Turner said he wasn't worried about returning to work, since police said the shooting was a "targeted" attack.

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Eventually, the city will heal.

Louisvillians and tourists will pass by the corner at Preston Pointe. Perhaps they will be grabbing a cup of Classico coffee, or visiting RiverLink to pay their bridge tolls, or scooping a toddler up onto their shoulders as they walk into Slugger Field for a ballgame.

Perhaps they will look up to Preston Pointe's slanted roof, and remember: What happened here can never be swept away, like so much broken glass.

Reach Madeline Mitchell at memitchell@enquirer.com. Reach Lucas Aulbach at laulbach@courier-journal.com.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Louisville bank shooting: How the scene unfolded minute by minute