PICTURED: victims of Louisville bank shooting including top executive Tommy Elliott, 63

The four victims of the Louisville, Kentucky mass shooting have been identified, one of whom was a close personal friend of Governor Andy Beshear.

Tommy Elliott, 63; Joshua Barrick, 40; James ‘Jim’ Tutt, 64; and Juliana Farmer, 57 were brutally gunned down early Monday morning by lone gunman Connor Sturgeon.

Elliott, the bank’s senior vice president, was a friend of Governor Beshear’s who had previously donated $2,000 to his gubernatorial campaign in 2018 and had donated to many Democratic candidates over the years.

He was well known in local and state Democratic circles and served on Beshear’s inaugural committee in 2019. 

Tutt, was, according to his LinkedIn, the CRE Market Executive for the Southern Region of Old National Bank, where the shooting took place at around 8.30 Monday morning.

Barrick, who appears to have a wife and two young children, was a senior vice president of commercial real estate banking at the bank, where he had worked since last August, according to his LinkedIn. 

Farmer – a mother and grandmother – was a loan analyst. 

‘Today I’m hurt and I’m hurting and I know so many people out there are as well. We lost four children of God today, one of whom was one of my closest friends,’ said Governor Beshear earlier in the day. 

‘Tommy Elliot helped me build my law career, helped me become governor, gave me advice on being a good dad. One of the people I talk to most in the world and very rarely were we talking about my job.’ 

Rookie police officer Nicolas Wilt, 26, was also shot in the head and remains in critical condition.  

Sturgeon, according to authorities, was an employee of the bank who had been terminated or was aware that he was about to be terminated.

The ‘lone gunman’ stormed into a conference room at the Old National Bank shortly after 8.30am – around half an hour before the branch opened to the public.

The shooter wielded an AR-15-style rifle and as well as the fatalities, wounded nine people, including two police officers.

Three victims have since been discharged from hospital.

Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear later fought back tears as he revealed two of his friends were killed in the atrocity – while a third was wounded. ‘I have a close friend that didn’t make it,’ he told a press conference. ‘And I have another that didn’t either.’

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The Democrat said his state attorney general campaign was run out of the building. ‘I know virtually everyone in it, that’s my bank,’ he said.

During the shooting, it was overheard on police scanners that Sturgeon was ‘suicidal and texted a friend that he would “shoot up the bank.”‘ Police also confirmed that Sturgeon livestreamed the shooting on his Instagram, which has since been taken down. 

The gunman was also killed in the shooting, but it is unclear if he died from a self-inflicted wound or from injuries he sustained as he exchanged gunfire with officers at the scene. 

Bank employees told how they fled from the blood-soaked scene and scrambled to the vault to hide from the killer as he rampaged through the building. Photos showed shattered glass and pools of blood lying outside the front of the office.

Witnesses have said that the alleged shooter was carrying a ‘long assault rifle’ when he fired multiple shots near the conference room at the bank.

‘He just started firing,’ an unnamed employee told WHAS . ‘I didn’t see his face. We were in the conference room.

‘Whoever was next to me got shot, their blood’s on me,’ he added.

Officers arrived within three minutes and found the shooter still firing, Louisville Metro Police Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey said. They exchanged fire with the killer.