The videos, taken from two wounded officers' lapels, offer a rare perspective of police officers responding to a massacre that killed five and injured eight others Monday. One, a rookie officer, was shot in the head within minutes of arriving at the scene, as his partner was grazed by a bullet and sought cover while still trying to take down the shooter.
Louisville Metro Police Department Deputy Chief Paul Humphrey walked reporters through edited footage and still photos at a new conference on Tuesday and praised the responding officers for their heroism.
They received the call of a shooting at Old National Bank at 8.38am, and the two officers arrived three minutes later, according to a chronology provided by police. They hadn't even exited their patrol car when the gunman began firing on them.
"Back up, back up, back up," one officer shouted as gunshots thundered in the background.
One still image from surveillance video showed 25-year-old shooter Connor Sturgeon,, who worked at the bank, holding a rifle, wearing jeans, a blue button-down shirt and sneakers, surrounded by broken glass inside the building. He had already shot numerous people inside, and police said he set up an ambush position to attack officers as they arrived.
The front doors were glass, elevated from the footpath, and because of the reflection, the officers could not see the shooter inside, Humphrey said. But he could see them.
Officer Cory Galloway retrieved a rifle from the boot of the patrol car.
"Cover for me," he said, and they reported to dispatch that there had been shots fired.
Galloway fired toward the gunman at 8.44 am, three minutes after arriving.
"I think I got him down! I think he's down!" he shouted.
"Suspect down! Get the officer!"
He advanced into the building, and shards of glass crunched under his feet. The video then showed Galloway approaching the suspect, who lay on the ground inside the lobby next to a long rifle.
"I think you can see the tension in that video," Humphrey said Tuesday. "You can understand the stress that those officers are going through. ... They did absolutely exactly what they needed to do to save lives. Once officers arrived on scene, not another person was shot."
Two of the four wounded still in the hospital had injuries that were not life-threatening, Smith said.
Louisville Mayor Craig Greenberg said it was crucial to release the footage because "transparency is important, even more so in a time of crisis".
Police Chief Jacquelyn Gwinn-Villaroel said at a news conference that Sturgeon bought the AR-15 assault-style rifle used in the attack at a local dealership on April 4.
Armed with the rifle, Sturgeon killed his co-workers - including a close friend of Kentucky's governor - while livestreaming the attack.
"We do know this was targeted. He knew those individuals, of course, because he worked there," Gwinn-Villaroel said, but didn't give an indication of a motive behind the shooting.
Gwinn-Villaroel praised the "heroic actions" of officers who engaged the shooter without hesitation when they arrived.
"They went towards danger in order to save and preserve life," she said.
"They stopped the threat so other lives could be saved. No hesitation, and they did what they were called do to."
The shooting, the 15th mass killing in the country this year, comes two weeks after a former student killed three children and three adults at a Christian primary school in Nashville, Tennessee, about 260 kilometres to south. That state's governor and his wife also had friends killed in that shooting.
