Kentucky: Bodycam footage captures moment Louisville shooter fires at police officers
The deadly attack has left another US city in mourning due to gun violence, as ITV News' Jay Akbar reports
Police have released body camera footage capturing the moment the shooter opens fire at officers as they arrived at the scene of a mass shooting in Louisville, Kentucky.
The videos, taken from two wounded officers' lapels, show the police response to the massacre at a bank on Monday, which left five people dead and eight others injured.
One of the wounded officers, Nickolas Wilt, was shot in the head within minutes of arriving at the scene, while his partner, Cory Galloway, was grazed by a bullet and sought cover.
Wilt had only finished training as a police officer ten days prior to the shooting.
The shooter, who was shot dead by police, has been identified as 25-year-old bank employee Connor Sturgeon.
During the attack he killed co-workers of his, including a close friend of Kentucky's governor, Andy Beshear.
On Tuesday, Louisville Metro Police Department Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey walked reporters through edited footage and still photos at a news conference.
Police were alerted to a shooting at the Old National Bank at 8.38am. The first two officers arrived on the scene three minutes later. Sturgeon opened fire on the two officers before they were able to get out of their response vehicle.
Galloway can be heard shouting "back up, back up, back up", as gunshots rain down.
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A still image from surveillance video showed Sturgeon holding a rifle and surrounded by broken glass, inside the building.
He had already shot numerous people inside the bank, and police said he set up an ambush position to attack officers as they arrived.
The front doors were glass, elevated from the pavement and, because of the reflection, the officers could not see the shooter inside, according to DC Humphrey. But Sturgeon was able to see any arriving officers.
Videos of Wilt and Galloway showed them walking up the stairs towards the front door when Sturgeon fired a barrage of bullets.
Both officers were left injured shortly afterwards, with Galloway's body camera showing that he fell and then took cover behind a concrete plant pot.
"The shooter has an angle on that officer," he said in the video recording. "We need to get up there. I don't know where he's at, the glass is blocking him."
As he waited for other officers to arrive Galloway fired towards the gunman.
"I think I got him down! I think he's down!" he said. "Suspect down! Get the officer!"
The video then showed Galloway approaching the suspect, who can be seen lying on the ground alongside a long rifle.
Wilt was still in a critical, but stable condition on Tuesday, according to University of Louisville Hospital Chief Medical Officer, Dr Jason Smith.
"I think you can see the tension in that video," DC Humphrey said.
"You can understand the stress that those officers are going through... They did absolutely exactly what they needed to do to save lives. Once officers arrived on scene, not another person was shot."
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said it was crucial to release the footage because "transparency is important - even more so in a time of crisis."
The shooting - the 15th mass killing in the country this year - comes two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, Tennessee.
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