The parents of Louisville gunman Connor Sturgeon revealed Thursday that their son said he suffered an unexplained "panic attack" and felt a desire to stay away from his office in the days leading up to the mass shooting there.
Lisa and Todd Sturgeon are now speaking out following the April 10 massacre at an Old National Bank location in downtown Louisville, Kentucky, during which Connor killed five at his workplace before dying in an exchange of gunfire with police. They said he was seeing mental health professionals and was grappling with anxiety and an attempted suicide within the last year, according to the network.
"He called me on the Tuesday before the event and he said, ‘Well I had a panic attack yesterday and I had to leave work’ and I said, ‘OK, well what happened? What was the cause?’" Lisa Sturgeon told NBC's "Today" show in an interview that aired Thursday morning.
"'I don't know. I don’t know what it was, but I think I should take off a while’ and I said, ‘That’s fine, we are here to help you,'" Sturgeon said, recalling the conversation.
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The mother says she had lunch with her son the next day, followed by an appointment with him and his psychiatrist on the Thursday before the shooting.
The last time his parents say they saw him was at a large family gathering on Easter Sunday, where Lisa said "he was fine."
"I have got big extended family on my mom’s side so there is like 60 people at this egg hunt and he is helping people, the last people that are finding their eggs, he is out there doing that," Todd Sturgeon told NBC. "He is joking, went home with his buddy and they watched the last round of The Masters."
Lisa said the next morning she received a phone call and "when I picked it up and [it] was his roommate, letting me know... it was something along the lines of Connor called his roommate and said, 'I left some notes there, call my mother, I’m going to go in and shoot up Old National.’"
"The roommate said he has a gun. And I’m like, ‘Where did he get a gun? We don’t have guns,’" Sturgeon added.
"As I’m driving, then I get a call that says there has been a shooting in there, multiple shots. And you go from praying for his life to praying that this is unimaginable," Todd Sturgeon also said. "That he just commits suicide and doesn’t hurt anyone else."
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Lisa Sturgeon said she and her husband are "so sorry" and "heartbroken" about the shooting.
"He did this to totally innocent individuals. There was no provocation, no justification, no rationalization at all," she told NBC. "They were just trying to do their jobs, provide for their families and they will never be the same due to his actions and if we could take it back we would."
Lisa Sturgeon also said because of Connor’s mental state, he should have "not have been able to purchase the gun" used in the shooting, which NBC reports was acquired five days prior.
"We know that Connor was seeing two mental health professionals and that he was able to walk in – and from what we have been told, just what he have been told – is that he walked in and walked out with a weapon and ammunition in 40 minutes," Todd Sturgeon said.
The father said he doesn’t think "there is any way to know for sure" why his son opened fire on April 10.
"There was no clear tell, so this could happen to someone else and we don’t want that to happen," Lisa Sturgeon said.
"How many mass shootings have there been this calendar year already?" she added. "It has been happening to other people like us and we are continuing to let it happen and we have to fix that."
