Louisville shooter Connor Sturgeon seemed like ‘normal person’
LOUISVILLE, Ky. — A former bank colleague of mass shooter Connor Sturgeon struggled to comprehend his massacre — describing him as a seemingly “normal person” who “kept his nose clean.”
“I knew him when he was an intern and then he got promoted to junior loan officer. He kept his nose clean,” Kevin Luoma, 42, a former relationship banker at Old National Bank, told The Post outside the branch late Tuesday.
“He was always working, they had him do a lot of different things. He was an intern for three years. If they weren’t happy with his work, they wouldn’t have him intern for three years,” said Luoma, who left in May 2022 after a year and a half with the bank.
“You would never expect him to do what he did. He was more of, I guess, a frat boy,” he said.
Luoma said he had bonded with the University of Alabama alum over sports.
“We talked about sports all the time. We had lunch a couple of times in the break room. He was a normal person, or so I thought. I didn’t think there was anything odd about him,” Luoma said.
He said he was shocked when another former co-worker called him at home and told him Sturgeon had shot up the bank.
“She called me and she said, ‘It’s Connor!’ I said, ‘What? There’s no way!’ I didn’t believe it. I could not believe it,” Luoma told The Post.
“Never in a million years did I think he would do this,” he said, adding that Sturgeon had “no red flags” and “no rage issues.”
He said he had stopped by Sturgeon’s office to chat on occasion.
“He was just like normal. He was a kid and he was learning the ropes and learning the job. I don’t think they ever had any beef,” Luoma said about Sturgeon and his victims.
“From what I know, he was a good employee. To me, I never would have saw this but it’s pure evil when you think about it,” he said.
Luoma said that “seeing the image of him walking through the halls — that really shook me. I would walk those halls all the time, too.”
He added: “When I saw the picture of him with the long gun down the hall, I just said, ‘Are you serious?’ It’s surreal.”
Luoma noted that Sturgeon opened fire inside a conference room “where we would have our Christmas gift party.”
“Just to know that it happened in the conference room, I’m at a loss,” he said.
The former employee was friends with victims Thomas Elliot, 63, a senior vice president, Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer, and James Tutt, 64, a market executive.
“These are good people who lost their lives and it’s heartbreaking,” he said.
Also killed in the bloodbath were Joshua Barrick, 40, a senior vice president, and Juliana Farmer, 45, a commercial loan specialist.
Follow The Post’s latest coverage of the shooting in Louisville
Rookie cop Nickolas Wilt, 26, was shot in the head and has undergone brain surgery. He remains in critical but stable condition.
Officer Cory Galloway was grazed in the shoulder in the shootout in which Sturgeon was killed.
On Tuesday, Sturgeon’s parents said their son had been struggling with mental health issues.
“While Connor, like many of his contemporaries, had mental health challenges which we, as a family, were actively addressing, there were never any warning signs or indications he was capable of this shocking act,” they said in a statement.
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