LOUISVILLE, Ky. — It's the text that changed her life, like so many of us in Louisville that day.
A message sent to Louisville Metro Police (LMPD) Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel, on the morning of April 10, 2023, said a gunman had opened fire inside Old National Bank in downtown Louisville.
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Gwinn-Villaroel was just four months into her role as interim chief.
"I looked down on my phone, and was like, I hope this is not truly happening," she said. "And then the phone calls started coming in."
Police were on scene within three minutes.
"My heart sank," Gwinn-Villaroel said. "When I arrived, we had officers pulling victims out of the building, literally, and trying to render and provide first aid. There's nothing routine about this."
When she arrived on scene, she struggled with what her position called for, and what she truly wanted to do.
"As chief, you have to manage it on the outskirts," she said "But I wanted to be in there, what can I do? How can I pull, help, or transport somebody? Because I'm still the police, you know, that's in my DNA. So, I was wrestling with that."
Officers Corey Galloway and Nick Wilt were first on scene. Wilt was just days into the job.
"He was only nine days, nine days and he was thrown into it," Gwinn-Villaroel said. "And it happened. It was truly a chaotic, devastating scene. It shapes everybody differently, but I was chief. I was present."
"That was the first officer underneath my command that was critically injured in that way."
For months, our community grappled with why and how this happened, grieving the ones we lost and hoping for any bit of good news about Wilt.
Miraculously, he was released from the hospital in August, three months after the shooting.
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The chief called him "a true miracle."
LMPD honored Wilt as its Officer of the Year during an awards banquet on March 1. Sitting in a wheelchair, alongside his family, he was all smiles.
"He's speaking well, and he's eating and he's smiling," she said. "And he is resilient."
Now, driving down Main Street, a building that once stood out as a unique part of our skyline, now tells a different story.
"When I go by there, I don't just rest on the tragedy," the chief said. "It brings back memories of that day. But I see it as well as that day Louisville came together. I see it as the day that resolve took a front seat. This is the day that strength truly still prevailed. That's what I see when I go by Old National Bank."
Now, the Old National Bank brank in downtown Louisville relocated to a floor of the Mercer Building back in June.
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