Cincinnati videos show man shooting as police close in
As the people around him dove for cover, the gunman walked through the lobby of Fifth Third Center in downtown Cincinnati on Thursday as casually as someone arriving to make a deposit.
He wore a button-down white shirt and dress slacks, a briefcase slung across him. Had one of his arms not been outstretched in front of him, he wouldn’t have looked out of place at all.
At the end of that outstretched arm was a 9 mm handgun that fired 35 rounds in a span of 4 minutes, 28 seconds. In that time, he fatally struck three strangers: Prudhvi Raj Kandepi, 25, Richard Newcomer, 64, and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48.
This was the scene shared Friday by Cincinnati police Chief Eliot Isaac during an afternoon news conference. Isaac played a variety of videos – two from officers’ body cameras, and more from bank surveillance footage – of the brief but bloody attack in the deadliest mass shooting the city has seen in years.
The videos showed that the gunman – identified as 29-year-old Omar Santa Perez – was stopped in his tracks when a police officer fired through one of the bank’s plate glass windows, fatally striking him in the back.
“The police saved lives,” said a visibly upset Mayor John Cranley. “We owe them all a huge debt of gratitude. Trust me: It would have been a lot worse if those officers hadn’t rushed in when they did.”
The videos played for media were edited to censor the most graphic images, but Cranley described a scene from the unedited footage: Less than a minute after the gunfire ended, he said a receptionist who’d been huddled beneath a desk to avoid crossfire crawled out.
“The fear you see in her face is hard to forget,” Cranley said, “followed by a sense of relief that the cavalry had arrived.”
According to the timestamps, the “cavalry” arrived quickly: Fifty-five seconds after Santa fired his first bullet, dispatch fielded its first 911 call. Police arrived at the bank 31⁄2 minutes after that.
Santa was still actively firing as police surrounded the bank lobby. Officers opened fire, and Santa fell facefirst onto the floor.
“Suspect down!” screamed one officer as he approached the door. Officer Jennifer Chilton, who’d fired through glass at the suspect, screamed back, “I’ve got him covered! I’m with you, I’m with you!”
Nine minutes after the melee began, the scene was deemed secure and the investigation began.
Isaac said police don’t know the motive yet. Santa had filed a lawsuit in 2017 against CNBC Universal Media LLC and TD Ameritrade Holding Corp. The suit was dismissed in June after a judge wrote that his complaint was “rambling, difficult to decipher and borders on delusional.”
In his only moment of speculation, Isaac said it was possible Santa “may have been trying to work his way to the federal courthouse, but we really could find no other motive or connection to that location.”
Isaac also said Santa’s gun had misfired at some point, as it was jammed when officers collected it as evidence.
The three men slain were all from different backgrounds and in different stages of their lives. Newcomer was a construction superintendent working with Gilbane Building Co.
Calderón is a Miami man who moved to Cincinnati a year ago for an executive-level job at Fifth Third Bank, according to his wife, Ana Maria.
Kandepi was the youngest victim at 25. He worked as a programmer at a technology company called Tech Services.
In addition to the three slain, two more people were injured, including 37-year-old Whitney Austin of Louisville, Kentucky. She survived 12 bullet wounds and is in stable condition at the University of Cincinnati Medical Center.