Democratic Kentucky Governor Andy Beshear said two of the people killed in a mass shooting at a Louisville bank were “close” friends of his, NBC News reports. At least four people were killed by the shooter, with at least ten confirmed injured. The shooter was killed by police responding to the scene.
“This is awful,” Beshear said during a press conference after the shooting. “I have a very close friend that didn’t make it tonight. And I have another close friend who did not either, and one who’s at the hospital but I hope is going to make it through.”
Mass shootings are becoming so common in the United States, virtually every corner of the population is one or two degrees away from knowing people who died or survived an incident. Beshear is the latest public figure to announce a connection to a mass shooter. In Nashville, a local television anchor announced on air that her child was in lockdown at a nearby school at the time of a shooting at Covenant School. Another local reporter disclosed that she was a school shooting survivor while reporting on the Nashville shooter. During Friday’s shooting at Delaware’s Christinana Mall, a Baltimore traffic reporter related her experience with her family, who were all in the mall at the time of the shooting.