By Brendan O’Brien
(Reuters) – A man fatally shot four people and wounded nine others in an attack on a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky on Monday, city officials said. The shooter was fatally shot at the scene, the city’s police department said, but it was unclear if it was from police gunfire or a self-inflicted wound.
The shooter was a current or former employee of the bank, Paul Humphrey, deputy chief of the Louisville Metropolitan Police Department, told reporters.
Police said they responded within minutes to reports of an attacker around 8:30 am (12:30 GMT) at an Old National Bank branch near Slugger Field baseball stadium in downtown. The officers fired at the shooter, police said.
The man was armed with an “AR-15-style” semi-automatic rifle, CNN reported, citing an anonymous federal law enforcement official.
Nine people injured in the attack were treated at the University of Louisville hospital, a hospital spokesman said, including two police officers. One of the officers was in critical condition, police said.
“We will come together as a community to work to prevent these horrible acts of gun violence from continuing here and across the state,” Craig Greenberg, mayor of the city of 625,000, told reporters at a briefing.
Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear, near tears, said during the briefing that he knew some of the victims.
“I have a very close friend who didn’t make it today,” Beshear said, “and one who is in the hospital and I hope he makes it through.”
Mass shootings have become recurring in the United States. So far this year, the nation has experienced 146 mass shootings, using the definition of four or more shooting deaths, not including the shooter, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit group.
In one of the most recent high-profile incidents, three 9-year-old students and three staff members were killed by a former student at a school in Nashville, Tennessee, on March 27.