By Kanishka Singh
(Reuters) -The five people shot dead in a shooting on Monday in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, were all colleagues of the suspect who gunned them down, and two of them were close friends of Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear.
Police identified the dead as Joshua Barrick, 40; Thomas Elliot, 63; Juliana Farmer, 45; James Tutt, 64; and Deana Eckert, 57.
“I have a very good friend who didn’t make it today. And I have another close friend who didn’t either,” a visibly emotional Beshear told reporters in a news briefing on Monday.
Elliott was a senior vice president of Old National Bank whose downtown branch in Louisville was the site of Monday’s assault. He had served as chair of Beshear’s inaugural committee in 2019.
“He helped me become governor,” Beshear said, describing Elliott as “an incredible friend.”
Elliott had also served as chair of the Kentucky Retirement Systems board and was appointed to the board by the current governor’s father Steve Beshear, a former governor himself.
Barrick’s LinkedIn profile showed he was the senior vice president of commercial real estate banking at Old National Bank and had been with the firm for less than a year.
His church, Holy Trinity Parish Louisville, said on Facebook he was survived by his wife and two children. It organized a gathering on Monday “to celebrate Josh’s life and to support and love his family in this most difficult time.”
Farmer’s LinkedIn page showed her to be a loan analyst at the bank while Tutt, who was the eldest among the deceased victims and a lifelong Kentucky resident, served as a real estate market executive at Old National Bank and had been with the firm for about 10 years.
Eckert, 57, who died late on Monday, had worked at Old National Bank for over six years, according to her LinkedIn profile. She was an executive administrative officer. Her family told an ABC News affiliate she underwent multiple surgeries on Monday but did not survive.
The suspect was fatally shot at the scene and identified by police as Connor Sturgeon, 23, who had joined the downtown branch of the Old National Bank as a full-time employee last year. Besides the five people who died, eight others were wounded in Monday’s shooting.
(Reporting by Kanishka Singh in Washington; Editing by Sandra Maler and Kim Coghill)
