More information from the trove of highly classified Pentagon documents leaked online continues to confirm what in many instances was already strongly suspected, but remained unproven.

“Ukrainian agents have pursued drone attacks inside Belarus and Russia, contrary to U.S. and Western wishes, and leaders in Kyiv have considered further targets outside Ukraine, according to a batch of leaked U.S. documents that appear to expose national security secrets,” NBC writes after analyzing the batch of 50 that it has in its possession.

“Two documents appear to show Ukraine launching operations inside other countries, though some allied nations have said any such actions might cause them to reconsider their ongoing support for Kyiv,” NBC continues.

Back in late February into March especially, Russia had seen multiple instances of swarms of drones breach its airspace spanning multiple days. These targeted an oil facility, air bases, as well as civilian infrastructure across various cities, villages and military areas.

Additionally, drone attacks in Russia’s Belgorod region have come semi-regularly over the course of the past months. The Russian defense ministry for example, stated of one attack at the end of February, “The Kyiv regime attempted to use unmanned aerial vehicles to attack civilian infrastructure in the Krasnodar region and the Adygea Republic.”

One of the more brazen of the cross-border sabotage incidents was widely reported at the time, and resulted in damage to a large Russian spy plane parked at the Machulishchy airbase in Minsk Oblast in Belarus. A large explosion had rocked the base. It was believed at the time that pro-Ukrainian Belarusian opposition operatives reportedly used a small explosive-laden drone to carry out the targeted attack of the stationary A-50 surveillance plane.

The leaked US documents confirm what minimally astute observers might have surmised at the time: this attack inside Belarus back in February wasn’t just some freelance sabotage by local “anti-war activists” — it was an operation of the Ukraine military (SBU) pic.twitter.com/v8UaP6KhZD

— Michael Tracey (@mtracey) April 10, 2023

The episode is referenced in the online trove of leaked documents, as NBC describes in its Tuesday report: 

One document, marked “Top Secret,” notes two separate attacks allegedly orchestrated by Kyiv that appear to have minimally damaged two Russian targets outside of Ukraine: a military airfield outside Minsk, Belarus, and a gas compressor station in the Moscow suburbs. 

In the first instance, officials with Ukraine’s Security Service, Kyiv’s main intelligence agency, assessed that their agents in Belarus had disobeyed orders and attacked a Russian surveillance aircraft at a Belarusian airfield on Feb. 26, according to the document.

The document alleges the agents used a quadcopter drone and caused “minor damage” to the plane, a RUS A-5OU, which the Russian state-owned weapons developer Rostec calls a “flying radar” that is capable of operating as a mobile command center.

As a result of the attack, President Lukashenko had warned this he could send his troops into Ukraine if Belarusian territory kept coming under direct threat.

Claims Swirl Around Supposed Strike On Russian A-50 Radar Jet In Belarus https://t.co/j1me5JQZmr

— Robert Farley (@drfarls) February 27, 2023

Authored by J.M. Phelps via The Epoch Times (emphasis ours),

A 22-year-old Army National Guard member has suffered an array of health issues—including two heart attacks that pushed her to the brink of death—after receiving two doses of the Moderna COVID-19 vaccine.

Karolina Stancik once considered herself “very healthy,” playing multiple sports from adolescence through early adulthood. At 21 years old, she chose to serve the country by joining the U.S. Army in February 2021.

“We were told that it was going to be required and we should take it before we shipped out to basic training,” she said, which was before Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin’s August 2021 announcement of the military vaccine mandate.

This messaging, according to Stancik, made the new recruits feel like, “You’re a bad person if you don’t get the vaccine, and you don’t care about the people around you.”

“As a young, new soldier, I and a lot of others around me, did what we were told,” Stancik said.

“We were too new to know all the rules and possible loopholes,” she added. “I pretty much blindly took it because I didn’t know you could get exemptions” for medical or religious reasons.

Stancik ended up taking the Moderna vaccine in March and April 2021; since then, “life has been an uphill battle,” she said.

First, came the breathing issues.

“I was dealing with what doctors considered asthma at the time without a diagnosis, and I had never had any lung issues at any other point in my life,” she said.

Stancik also experienced what felt like a cold or sinus infection, pressure in her head, and dizziness.

Next came a fever, as well as numbness and tingling throughout her body. But she was told by a doctor that these symptoms were normal.

At one point, her command threatened to accuse her of insubordination for not participating in physical training. However, “a doctor’s order kept me from getting in trouble with my command,” she said. The Epoch Times viewed that order, as well as other medical documentation and Stancik’s Army permanent medical profile, to corroborate her claims.

Problems with visual processing and what she described as neurological issues began in October 2021. These included numbness, tingling, stabbing pains throughout her body, loss of motor function, tremors, and more.

“It all progressively got worse, and never stopped,” Stancik said.

In October 2021, she found herself in an emergency room, following her first heart attack. Things only escalated after that as she started experiencing nausea, a high heart rate, stabbing pains, and blacking out, she said. In February 2022, she had a second heart attack.

In addition to these two heart attacks, Stancik said she’s been diagnosed with severe asthma and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome (POTS), a blood circulation disorder that causes a higher heart rate when transitioning from sitting or lying down to standing up.

In November 2022, her doctor told her she had “signs of a mini-stroke,” she said. After that incident and the onset of impaired eyesight, she was finally advised to see a neurologist. She’s now waiting for the results of tests for neuropathy, dysautonomia, lupus, multiple sclerosis, and others.

Stancik’s neurological problems have continued this year.

“As I wait for results about my neurological issues, I’m also experiencing increasing problems with my visual processing,” she said.

With health issues on the rise, she said, “Half together is put together for me right now.”

Read more here…

A massive volcano erupted early Tuesday in the Kamchatka Peninsula located in Russia’s far east, spewing a column of ash 65,000 feet into the sky. 

According to Reuters, the eruption of Shiveluch, one of the most active volcanoes in Kamchatka, is one of the biggest in sixty years. 

“The ash reached 20 kilometers high, the ash cloud moved westwards, and there was a very strong fall of ash on nearby villages,” said Danila Chebrov, director of the Kamchatka branch of the Geophysical Survey.

Footage of the powerful eruption of the Shiveluch volcano in Kamchatka. pic.twitter.com/CzTQsttsBD

— Blackrussian (@Blackrussiantv) April 11, 2023

The ash cloud measured more than 300 miles long and triggered an aviation warning in the region. 

Predicted transport of total column SO2 from #Shiveluch🌋eruption across the N Pacific in the @CopernicusECMWF Atmosphere Monitoring Service @ECMWF forecast initialized on 11 April at 00 UTC, assimilating 🛰️SO2 obs assuming ~5 km injection. Latest charts https://t.co/MYH0xiOxPg pic.twitter.com/yEKSCK7tow

— Mark Parrington (@m_parrington) April 11, 2023

Today’s explosive eruption of the Shiveluch volcano captured by the Himawari-9 satellite. pic.twitter.com/9u9XebVv1v

— CIRA (@CIRA_CSU) April 11, 2023

“The volcano was preparing for this for at least a year… and the process is continuing though it has calmed a little now,” Chebrov said.

Located about 30 miles from the volcano, the village of Klyuchi was covered in more than 3 inches of ash. 

Russia: Klyuchi village covered in ash following Shiveluch volcano eruption in Kamchatka

The Shiveluch volcano erupted early Tuesday morning in Russia’s far eastern Kamchatka region, spewing ash up to 20 kilometers above sea level. pic.twitter.com/dwQXdE9cRQ

— PressTV Extra (@PresstvExtra) April 11, 2023

that’s not snow, it’s ash
after the eruption of shiveluch volcano in russia pic.twitter.com/W88Nbkap09

— ian bremmer (@ianbremmer) April 11, 2023

Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula is home to 300,000 residents. The region is about 4,000 miles east of Moscow. 

It’s only fitting that in a day when there was no fundamental news and when everyone is waiting for tomorrow’s CPI print, with volumes near the lowest of the year, that the only thing that mattered today was positioning and technicals.

And as we wrote earlier, the most important technical factor was that hedge fund shorting of S&P futures had reached the highest level in 11 years…

… which coupled with growing pessimism about the market-leading tech generals (according to Goldman’s PB desk)…

… and absent a bucketload of bad news, meant that stocks were primed for another slow motion meltup, which incidentally is precisely what we have seen with the Goldman most-shorted index rising sharply for a second day.

Add to this the still sizable CTA bid which we previewed at the start oft he month meant at least $29BN in forced S&P buying…

“CTAs bought $20.5B of equities last week. Assuming a flat tape they should buy another $71bn over the next 1 week. $29B is SPX alone – that’s alot” – GS https://t.co/XyHzyEJ1TS

— zerohedge (@zerohedge) April 4, 2023

… and that’s why for the third day in a row, futures erased another modest dip and traded to session highs

… before some early selling across the 0DTE complex starting at 230pm ET eventually pushed stocks lower…

… with almost all sectors solidly in the green…

… including the battered bank sector, as the KRE regional bank index rose for the 4th day…

… with the tech sector weakest on the day…

… the result of treasury yields rising for the 3rd day in a row following Friday’s stronger than expected payrolls report…

… and even though the Fed’s latest career Democrat, Chicago Fed president Austan Goolsbee, strongly hinted he would dissent with any more rate hikes next month, the market was skeptical and kept odds of a 25bps hike in May at just above 71%.

In short, just another quiet, rangebound day ahead of tomorrow’s CPI print.

Elsewhere, the clash over where gold will go now that it has crossed above $2,000 continued, with the yellow metal trading on either side of this key line, as banks do everything they can do prevent a breakout to new record highs. Ironically, it’s silver that has been the sleeper hit, rising pretty much every day for the past month.

But the biggest mover for the second day in a row, was not gold but rather digital gold, with bitcoin quietly extending on its YTD gains to 82%, and trading above $30,000 for the first time since last June much to the powerless rage of fake socialists (and Indians) like Elizabeth Warren.

Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg on Tuesday sued Rep. Jim Jordan (R-OH) in an effort to keep House Republicans from asking questions about federal funds used by the city to indict former President Donald Trump.

In a 50-page lawsuit filed in the Southern District of New York, Bragg accused Jordan of a “brazen and unconstitutional attack” on his prosecution of Trump, and a “transparent campaign to intimidate and attack” Bragg, who unveiled 34 felony charges against Trump over alleged attempts to cover up a potential sex scandal during the 2016 Presidential campaign.

Bragg seeks to bar Jordan and his Congressional allies from enforcing a subpoena sent to Mark Pomerantz, who formerly headed up the DA’s Trump investigation and later wrote a book detailing his experience. Pomerantz resigned weeks after Bragg took office early last year, after deciding not to seek an indictment of Trump, according to the NY Times.

Jordan responded on Tuesday, slamming Bragg.

“First they indict a President for no crime. Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it,” he said.

From House Judiciary Committee Chairman Jim Jordan (R-OH) in response to Bragg lawsuit:

“First they indict a President for no crime. Then, they sue to block congressional oversight when we ask questions about the federal funds they say they used to do it.”

— Chad Pergram (@ChadPergram) April 11, 2023

Bragg’s office has repeatedly accused House Republicans of illegally meddling in a criminal investigation. Republicans, meanwhile, say they have oversight powers over Bragg’s unprecedented step of indicting a former US President who is currently running for office.

A parade in Northern Ireland by opponents of the Good Friday peace accord turned violent on Monday when Irish nationalists threw petrol bombs at a police vehicle. The mayhem comes on the eve of President Biden’s arrival to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the deal. 

The parade took place in Derry, in the far northwest corner of Northern Ireland, on the border of The Republic of Ireland. The official name of the town is Londonderry, but it’s widely referred to as Derry, particularly by Catholics and Irish nationalists who prefer a version that doesn’t reinforce UK control. 

Photos and video show a group of masked young men hurling firebombs at an armored Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI) Land Rover, with The Telegraph reporting that one tried in vain to break a window before the fiery onslaught. 

Masked Irish protesters opposing the Good Friday peace accord in Londonderry attack police with petrol bombs ahead of US President Joe Biden’s visit to Northern Ireland. Police said no officers were injured pic.twitter.com/QtKtq7ySt3

— TRT World (@trtworld) April 10, 2023

“This was a senseless and reckless attack on our officers who were in attendance in the area in order to comply with our legal duties,” said Derry City & Strabane Area Commander Chief Superintendent Nigel Goddard. No injuries were reported. 

“During today’s policing operation, we deployed evidence-gathering resources, and obtained footage which will now be reviewed as part of an investigation into potential offences under the Terrorism Act,” said Goddard. 

In March, the UK’s MI5 intelligence service elevated the threat level from Northern Ireland-related terrorism to “severe,” which means an attack is highly likely. On Thursday, PSNI Chief Constable Simon Byrne warned officers that any type of disorder could be a pretext to a gun or bomb ambush. 

Monday’s marchers in Derry carried Irish flags, and others that read “Unfinished Business” and “Unfinished Revolution.” Their route took them to the city cemetery, where a speaker said it isn’t sufficient to shout “up the IRA. The important thing is to join the IRA.” 

Biden is set to arrive on Tuesday for a four-day itinerary that will take him to both Northern Ireland and the Republic. The visit is timed to mark the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement that largely quelled some 30 years of sectarian violence in Northern Ireland that killed more than 3,600. Among other provisions, the agreement allowed for the creation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which would have responsibility for most aspects of local governance. 

However, as Monday’s events illustrated, sporadic violence persists among those who seek to end British dominion over Northern Ireland. 

Some Irish nationalists decried the petrol-bomb assault. “These are kids with no memory or experience of the violence of 25 years ago and they’re being exploited and abused by people with no vision for the future,” Northern Ireland Assembly Member of Parliament Colum Eastwood told the Belfast Telegraph.   

As we reported in October, a peaceful pursuit of Irish unification has been gaining steam, with a goal of conducting a Northern Ireland referendum on unification with the republic. An August 2022 poll found 41% support unity, a 10-point gain in 10 years. 

There appears to be “some” confusion at the Fed, or perhaps just a rising tide of politically-motivated dissent.

One day after NY Fed president John Williams, the man who sparked a revolt at the most important regional Federal Reserve bank for being too clueless, said that he doesn’t think rate hikes are behind the “issues” at failed banks, and even more idiotically, just hours after saying this morning that he doesn’t think bank failures will be a “big negative” for the US economy, another Fed president – this time the Fed’s extremely political Chicago Fed president – who previously served as Obama’s chief economist (and whose ascent to the top of the Chicago Fed was marred in yet another Fed scandal), refuted everything Williams said earlier when he warned that the Fed should exercise “prudence and patience” in raising interest rates further as central bankers assess just how much last month’s banking turmoil will contribute to tighter lending conditions.

“Given how uncertainty abounds about where these financial headwinds are going, I think we need to be cautious,” Goolsbee said Tuesday in prepared remarks for an Economic Club of Chicago event. “We should gather further data and be careful about raising rates too aggressively until we see how much work the headwinds are doing for us in getting down inflation.”

Translation: it’s time to pause the Fed’s rate hikes (which effectively would mean the end of the tightening cycle) and assess the damage the Fed has already unleashed.

Goolsbee, the Fed’s newest policymaker  whose highly politicized appointment as head of the Chicago Fed saw big internal dissent as well as two opposing votes, and whose job may have been a political favor catalyzed by intervention from his headhunting wife, is even more remarkably a voter on monetary policy this year and is now the first official to signal that he may support holding rates where they are at the Fed’s May 2-3 meeting — though he stopped short of explicitly endorsing a pause.

Unlike Goolsbee, who is viewed as the Biden admin’s most dedicated plant at the Fed now that Lael Brainard has been shifted to the Treasury, most Fed officials have emphasized that even amid the uncertainties created by the bank crisis, the Fed has more work to do to bring inflation down to its 2% target (to avoid confusion, these are the same clueless hacks and career academics who two years ago said inflation was transitory).

Echoing analyses by Goldman and others, the Chicago Fed chief said that inflation and labor market data came in “surprisingly strong” at the end of 2022 and beginning of this year, but the knock-on effects of the Silicon Valley Bank collapse in March and the resulting financial-market stress may help the Fed in its campaign to cool the economy.

While Goolsbee was careful to say that the Fed should still prioritize its mission to bring down elevated price pressures, he said that signs are emerging that banks are pulling back on lending, helping the Fed. Almost as if the Fed precipitated the bank failure to enable it to achieve its economic slowdown mission faster.

“We’ve been tightening financial conditions to bring inflation down, so if the response to recent banking problems leads to financial tightening, monetary policy has to do less,” he said.

According to Goolsbee, that contraction could equal somewhere between 25 to 75 basis points of tightening, which not coincidentally is exactly what Goldman calculates last week; Goldman of course is the same bank that has also been pushing for a rate hike pause to “assess” the economic damage before resuming hikes again later in the year.

Goolsbee’s emphasis on watching credit conditions differ from that of his even dumber colleagues who insist that the Fed needs to do more to tame prices (the same prices which are soaring thanks to the Fed’s inaction in 2021), recession and credit crunch be damned.

Goolsbee’s most prominent foil is another Wall Street muppet, formern Goldman staffer and upward failing Minneapolis Fed President Neel Kashkari, who said last month that though it’ll take a while to see the full effects of the banking fallout, the Fed still has more work to do to lower inflation, and may have to hike rates all the way until 6%.

New York Fed President John Williams, a permanent voter on the Federal Open Market Committee, said Tuesday at a separate event that one more rate increase is a “reasonable starting place” for officials.

Goolsbee also nodded to the standoff in Congress about raising the country’s debt limit. “Moments of financial stress are a particularly bad time to take actions that could ignite a financial crisis on their own like, say, defaulting on U.S. Treasuries in a fight over the debt limit,” Goolsbee said.

While there’s been no official announcement, Twitter owner Elon Musk has folded the social media giant into a newly formed shell company called “X Corp,” fueling speculation that he’s going to integrate his $44 billion acquisition into an “everything app” that could – similar to China’s WeChat, include everything from payment processing, to booking events, to messaging.

Early Tuesday morning, Musk tweeted “X” – in what Bloomberg assumed was a direct reference to the move.

X

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) April 11, 2023

According to an April 4 filing in a lawsuit filed against the company and former CEO Jack Dorsey by conservative activist Laura Loomer, Twitter “no longer exists” after being merged with X Corp.

It’s unclear what the change means for Twitter, which has seen a sweeping overhaul since Musk bought the company for $44 billion last year. The billionaire owner has in the past suggested that buying Twitter would be an “accelerant” for creating X — which he dubbed an “everything app.” Musk tweeted about the move Tuesday with the single character “X”.

The world’s second-richest man has professed his desire to make X similar to China’s WeChat, a super-app owned by Tencent Holdings Ltd. used for everything from payments and booking event tickets to messaging. But he’s been vague about how it will fit in with his sprawling business empire, ranging from the electric car giant Tesla Inc. to Space Exploration Technologies Corp. Musk also owns the domain “X.com” — the name of the online payments company he started and eventually merged with PayPal. -Bloomberg

Last April Musk set up a trio of Delaware holding companies with variations on the name “X Holdings” in conjunction with his takeover bid of Twitter. “X Corp,” however, was set up on March 9 in Nevada, while its merger with Twitter was submitted on March 15, according to state filing records.

Musk sits atop X Holdings Company, the parent of X Corp which was set up last month and has an authorized capital of $2 million, according to the report.

Is inevitable https://t.co/lDL5KnrHS2

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) April 11, 2023

Perhaps the above explains Musk’s decision last week to throttle links to Substack, the self-publishing platform which launched a Twitter competitor – Substack Notes, which allows writers to produce short posts resembling tweets.

Over the weekend, Twitter reversed the decision – allowing users to click substack links without a warning message, however search queries for Substack posts show up as blank.

This isn’t the first time Musk has acted to defend Twitter’s model. Last year, he suspended accounts for rival Mastadon, and blocked tweets linking to its service after several users tweeted about a Twitter account which was using public information to track Musk’s private jet, Axios reports.

By Tsvetana Paraskova of Oilprice.com

Despite short-term bearish factors and relatively low natural gas prices for the nearest months, the longer-dated futures of Europe’s benchmark prices have rallied in recent weeks, suggesting that the market is jittery about European gas supply for next winter.

The front-month futures at the TTF hub, the benchmark for Europe’s gas trading, were at $47.64 (43.65 euros) per megawatt-hour (MWh) as of 11 a.m. GMT on Tuesday. The nearest futures prices have been lingering around that range for weeks, as the winter ended, the weather turned warmer, and stockpiles at Europe’s gas storage sites are at their highest for an end to a winter period for a decade.

However, the December futures, at $63.31 (58 euros) per MWh on Tuesday, have rallied by 9% in the last two weeks, per Bloomberg data, suggesting continued concerns about refilling European storage ahead of next winter and uncertainty about France’s nuclear fleet availability.

As of April 9, storage sites across the EU were 55.55% full, according to data from Gas Infrastructure Europe. That’s well above the five-year average and the gas in storage levels at the end of the previous two winters.

Contrary to initial expectations, the 2022/2023 winter went surprisingly well, but the energy crisis isn’t over, and Europe is not out of the woods yet.

If demand for LNG in Asia, especially in China, picks up with the Chinese reopening, Europe may have to pay up for spot supply to beat competition from the Asian market ahead of next winter.

As fears of a gas crunch did not materialize this winter, pulling European natural gas prices down, Europe shouldn’t count on another warmer-than-usual winter and less competition from Asia as it starts to prepare for the 2023/2024 winter, analysts say. In a market with stronger competition from Asia for LNG supply, the current European gas prices may not be enough to continue attracting spot cargoes.

The 25-year-old employee of Old National Bank who killed five people and wounded nine more in Louisville on Monday morning livestreamed his rampage on Instagram. A city official has related specifics of the stream to CNN, while many new details about the attack and its perpetrator have emerged.

Connor Sturgeon, whose LinkedIn profile says he was a “syndications associate and portfolio banker,” wrote to his parents and a friend of his intent to shoot up the bank, but it’s not clear yet whether that communication was physical or electronic, or whether the recipients received them before he opened fire with an AR-15 rifle around 8:30 am.    

Video from a witness shows a chaotic scene at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville.

“Active shooter at the bank” an officer screams as multiple gunshots are fired on the background.

The details emerging from this are very grim. pic.twitter.com/Ax3Gc5imNg

— Dalton Godbey (@DaltonTVNews) April 10, 2023

While there’s no official confirmation of it so far, Louisville’s WDRB reported that the last three posts on Sturgeon’s apparent Instagram account on Monday morning were:

• A meme of Star Wars character Kylo Ren saying “I know what I have to do, but I don’t know if I have the strength to do it.” 
• Accompanied by the label “MONDAY VIBES,” a meme of a character from the movie Office Space saying “I could burn this whole place down.” 
• Sturgeon’s apparent own words: “THEY WON’T LISTEN TO WORDS OR PROTESTS. LET’S SEE IF THEY HEAR THIS.”

Citing a police source, CNN reported that the shooter had learned that he was going to be fired after working at Old National for two years and previously interned there for three summers.  

His attack began before the bank’s operating hours, and he livestreamed it on Instagram. The platform has since taken the video offline, but police have a copy.

A Louisville official tells CNN the stream begins with a view of his AR-15. A woman greets the shooter with a “good morning,” and he replies “you need to get out of here.” Sturgeon attempts to shoot her but the weapon on is on safe and doesn’t have round chambered. He corrects those issues and shoots her in the back. 

He then proceeds to shoot many other employees who try to outrun him, before sitting down in the lobby and seemingly waiting for police. That wait lasts about 90 seconds, and the then is hit and killed in the gun battle. 

An employee meeting had been underway, with some attending in person and others via video. Manager Rebecca Buchheit-Sims told CNN she attended remotely, and saw her coworkers being gunned down on her computer screen: “I witnessed people being murdered. I don’t know how else to say that…I’m just as much in shock and disbelief and was in disbelief as I watched it unravel.”

Employee Tammy Madigan told the Daily Beast of her rush to find shelter: “The bathrooms on our floor have keycode entry, so it was probably the safest place we could think of to hide. So the six of us went into the men’s room, turned off all the sound on our phones, tried to be as quiet as we could.” Others hid in a vault. 

The first cops arrived on the scene within three minutes of being dispatched. Dispatchers told officers to look for a 6′ 4″ white male in dark pants, adding that he’d left a voicemail for a friend declaring his intent to “kill everyone at the bank,” reports Heavy.  

Seven employees and two officers were wounded. The five dead are Joshua Barrick (40), Thomas Elliot (63), Juliana Farmer (45), James Tutt (64) and Deana Eckert (57).  

🚨 #EXCLUSIVE: The scene of the Louisville shooting, as seen from the front of the entrance of the Old National Bank Building

(ft. the building’s bitter landlord literally assaulting me on a sidewalk) pic.twitter.com/v3FPSQNE1L

— Nick Sortor (@nicksortor) April 11, 2023

Police officer Nickolas Wilt, a 26-year-old rookie who graduated just 10 days before the shooting, was critically wounded with a gunshot to the head and underwent brain surgery. The other wounded officer has not been identified. 

As with every mass shooting, people raced to discern the shooter’s political orientation. Some of his social media posts reflected support for the Black Lives Matters protests and criticism of police and Donald Trump. Trying to reach conclusions about his sexuality, others highlighted the fact that the shooter’s LinkedIn profile said he uses “he/him” pronouns. 

A 2020 University of Alabama graduate with a masters in finance, Sturgeon is described as a star multi-sport athlete in high school. Amid the shock of learning what Sturgeon did, a former classmate told Daily Beast:

“The big thing I keep going back to is that in the first year of high school, we played football together in eighth grade, he was out most of the year because he had multiple concussions. Then he had a couple more in high school. I’m not saying it’s the cause but I always think back to that… There were times I’d wonder, will this catch up with him? But never in this way. He’s the last person I’d expect would do this.” 

An autopsy would be needed to determine if Sturgeon had Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy (CTE). The degenerative brain disease caused by multiple episodes of head trauma, CTE leaves people prone to aggression, mood swings, depression and paranoia. Murderous New England Patriot Aaron Hernandez is perhaps the most infamous example. 

High school friends described Sturgeon as smart and popular. However, in an introspective 2018 essay at the the University of Alabama, Sturgeon wrote,

“My self-esteem has long been a problem for me. As a late bloomer in middle and high school, I struggled to a certain extent to fit in, and this has given me a somewhat negative self-image that persists today. Making friends has never been especially easy, so I have more experience than most in operating alone.”

#BREAKING
A heavily-armed convoy just arrived in the 1500 Blk. of Taylor Avenue and is about to breach a house. ATF says this is in relation to the mass shooting downtown. @WHAS11 #Louisville pic.twitter.com/jHgRtSCtJZ

— Travis Breese (@tbreeseontv) April 10, 2023

Jim Ryan, CEO of Chicago- and Evansville-based Old National Bank, immediately traveled to Louisville along with other senior executives. “As we await more details, we are deploying employee assistance support and keeping everyone affected by this tragedy in our thoughts and prayers,” said Ryan. 

At a Tuesday morning press conference, Louisville’s police chief said Sturgeon acquired his rifle legally from a local dealer on April 4.   

On Monday, President Biden issued a statement calling for gun control measures that seemingly have no relevance whatsoever to Monday’s shooting: 

“How many more Americans must die before Republicans in Congress will act to protect our communities? It’s long past time that we require safe storage of firearms. Require background checks for all gun sales. Eliminate gun manufacturers’ immunity from liability.” 

Not letting a crisis go to waste, Team Biden also threw in a thinly-veiled opportunistic shot at potential 2024 presidential opponent Ron DeSantis, as the statement condemned Republican officials “from Florida to North Carolina to the U.S. House of Representatives, [who’ve] double[d] down on dangerous bills that make our schools, places of worship, and communities less safe.”

Presumably that statement refers to laws enabling law-abiding citizens to carry firearms into those places. Does the White House really think the people at Louisville’s Old National Bank would have been worse off if some of the bankers were carrying pistols?

Sadly, they were prohibited to do so — by CEO Ryan and Old National Bank — without “proper authorization.” Per page 49 of the bank’s employee handbook:   

“Firearms, weapons, and other dangerous or hazardous devices or substances are prohibited from the premises of Old National without proper authorization. Firearms may be kept in parking areas in accordance with state law where recognizing such possession is required by state law.”