(AP) — A shooting Monday at a bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky killed at least four people and wounded at least eight others, police said. The suspected lone shooter was also dead.

The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the United States this year, comes just two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian elementary school in Nashville, about 160 mile (260 kilometers) to the south.

Police arrived as gunshots were still being fired inside the Old National Bank and exchanged fire with the shooter, Louisville Metro Police Department Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said at a news conference. It wasn’t clear whether the shooter was killed himself or was shot by officers.

“We believe this is a lone gunman involved in this that did have a connection to the bank. We’re trying to establish what that connection was to the business, but it appears he was a previous employee,” Humphrey said.

Humphrey said that at least eight people were being treated at hospitals for wounds, including two police officers, one of whom was in critical condition.

An emotional Kentucky Gov. Andy Beshear said he lost friends in the shooting in a building on East Main Street not far from the Louisville Slugger Field and Waterfront Park.

“This is awful,” he said. “I have a very close friend who didn’t make it today. And I have another close friend who didn’t, either. And one who’s at the hospital that I hope is going to make it through.”

It was the second time that Beshear was personally touched by a mass tragedy since becoming governor.

In late 2021, one of the towns devastated by tornadoes that tore through Kentucky was Dawson Springs, the hometown of Beshear’s father, former two-term Kentucky Gov. Steve Beshear. Andy Beshear frequently visited Dawson Springs as a boy and has talked emotionally about his father’s hometown.

Humphrey, the deputy chief, said the actions of responding police officers in Louisville on Monday morning had undoubtedly saved lives.

“This is a tragic event,” he said. “But it was it was the heroic response of officers that made sure that no more people were more seriously injured than what happened.”

This year’s 15 mass shootings is the most during the first 100 days of a calendar year since 2009, when 16 incidents had occurred by April 10, according to a mass killings database maintained by The Associated Press and USA Today in partnership with Northeastern University.

Going back to 2006, the first year for which data has been compiled, the years with the most mass killings were 2019 and 2022, with 45 and 42 mass killings recorded during the entire calendar year. The pace in 2009 slowed later in the year, with 32 mass killings recorded that year.

Source: AP

--Agencies