Louisville shooter Connor Sturgeon was star athlete but suffered ‘multiple concussions’

The man suspected of killing five and injuring eight at the Old National Bank in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, was a star athlete in high school who allegedly suffered so many concussions, he wore a helmet at basketball games. 

Police identified the gunman as Connor Sturgeon, 25, an employee at the bank who livestreamed his rampage on Instagram before police shot him dead on Monday.

When he was a freshman at the Floyd Central High School in Floyds Knobs, Indiana, Sturgeon was an all-around athlete, playing basketball, football and running track. 

As his father was the head coach of the team, a former classmate told the Daily Beast that Sturgeon was known as “Mr. Floyd Central.” 

However, the classmate, who asked to remain anonymous, noted that Sturgeon oddly wore a helmet while playing basketball due to multiple concussions he suffered while playing football. 

“We played football together in eighth grade. He was out most of the year because he had multiple concussions,” he said. “Then he had a couple more in high school.”

A photo from Sturgeon’s junior year with the Floyd Central High School basketball team showed him wearing a helmet at a game where he scored nearly half the team’s points. 

The classmate said he couldn’t help but think about Sturgeon’s high school injuries and link them to other incidents where athletes who have suffered concussions have gone on to harm themselves or others.

In recent years, doctors have made numerous links between football players and chronic traumatic encephalopathy (CTE), a degenerative brain disease caused by repeated blows to the head.

Those diagnosed with CTE usually have impaired thinking and memory and are prone to aggression, mood swings, depression and paranoia, according to the Concussion Legacy Foundation.

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Disgraced New England Patriots tight end Aaron Hernandez, who was convicted of murder in 2015, was found to have had chronic CTE after his 2017 prison suicide.

Follow The Post’s latest coverage of the shooting in Louisville

• Louisville bank gunman Connor Sturgeon shot former mentor — who played dead to survive
• Louisville bank shooter’s mom warned cops of Connor Sturgeon’s plans during panicked 911 call
• Everything we know about Louisville bank shooter Connor Sturgeon

During his senior year, Sturgeon won the 2016 News and Tribune Sports Performance Yearly Award for Boys Track Athlete of the Year.

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After graduating high school, Sturgeon went on to the University of Alabama to study finance, earning his master of science in finance in 2020. 

While attending the university, Sturgeon worked as a summer intern for the Old National Bank for three consecutive years, eventually joining as a commercial development professional in 2021 and a full-time associate and portfolio banker last year, according to his LinkedIn account.

While his Instagram account where he filmed the shooting has been taken down, screengrabs shared by local reporters show Sturgeon appearing unsteady in the hours leading up to the shooting. 

His alleged final posts — which couldn’t immediately be verified by The Post — included meme photos with the captions: “I know what I have to do but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it” and “I could burn this whole place down.” 

His last post allegedly read: “They won’t listen to words or protests. Let’s see if they hear this.”

Police are still working to determine a motive for the deadly shooting, in which the four victims were identified as high-ranking members of the Louisville bank branch.  

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Sturgeon had learned he was about to be fired from the bank, according to CNN, which said he also left a note for his parents and a friend explaining his intention to shoot up the bank. 

Among the victims were Tommy Elliott, 63, and Joshua Barrick, 40, both senior vice presidents; Jim Tutt, 64, a market executive; Juliana Farmer, 45, a commercial loan specialist; and Deanna Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer.