LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Josh Barrick joked about playing hooky April 10, 2023, his wife remembers.

He never did that, Jessica Barrick says now, but the family had just returned from a spring break trip to the beach, and he was slow to get out of bed and get back to work. 

"We both knew he was gonna go to work," she said in a interview nearly a year later.

Josh and Jessica Barrick

Josh and Jessica Barrick

After Barrick dropped off their two kids at school, her husband called her on the phone to talk as he made his way to work, something that wasn't a normal part of their routine but now sticks out in her memory as the last time she talked to him alive.

"We're just chit-chatting and said 'I love you' and hung up," Barrick said. "And I mean that was like, I don't know 15-20 minutes later, he was just gone. ... He's literally right there and then he's just gone."

Josh Barrick was one of several people who'd just sat down in a conference room for an 8:30 a.m. meeting at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville when Connor Sturgeon, a 25-year-old former employee, opened fire with a rifle, killing five bank employees and injuring either others.

Dana Mitchell, who survived being shot in the back inside the conference room, said Josh Barrick ran for the door right behind someone who made it out safely, Mitchell said. A split second made the difference.

"I was afraid to call him in case he was hiding," Barrick said, thinking back on those first moments. "I didn't want it to ring."

She texted him frantically and eventually called, too. There was no answer.

"I just knew when I hadn't heard from him," Barrick said. "I already knew but I didn't want to know."

'The hardest thing I've ever done in my life'

Barrick rushed downtown, and some friends met her there for support. Little bits of information trickled out, but so much else was lost in the chaos. They didn't know what to do or where to go. Eventually, they made their way to UofL Hospital.

In a fog and struggling to process how so much could change so quickly, Barrick said the seriousness of the situation even more clear when a Louisville Metro Police officer asked her to confirm what her husband wore to work that day.

Old National Bank Memorial

"When they asked me what he wore, I knew he was gone," she said. "They wouldn't confirm it. But why else do you need to know?"

A friend had to write down what Barrick could remember, because her trembling hands wouldn't let her hold the pencil. Shortly thereafter, an officer confirmed what she already feared.

"I'm pretty sure I was crying like the whole time," she said. "I just kept screaming his name. I just couldn't believe he was gone."

The five bank employees killed in the shooting were Barrick, 40, a senior vice president; Deana Eckert, 57, an executive administrative officer; Tommy Elliott, 63, also a senior vice president; Juliana Farmer, 45, a loan analyst; and Jim Tutt Jr., 64, a commercial real estate market executive.

Eight others, including two LMPD officers, were shot and hurt.

Sturgeon was shot and killed after exchanging fire with officers on Main Street. After months struggling with mental illness, he purchased an AR-15-style rifle a week earlier at a Louisville gun shop.

After advice from her priest, Barrick went to her sister and brother-in-law's house to tell the kids their dad wasn't coming home.

"There's not words for that conversation," she said. "That was the hardest thing I've ever done in my life, looking in their faces and telling them that."

'I'm so proud that I got to be with him'

The year since Jessica Barrick lost her husband and an 8-year-old boy and 10-year-old girl lost their father has been filled with questions unanswered and a hole that can't be filled.

The Barricks take life one day at a time, navigating their grief while holding dear the happy memories that still fill them with gratitude and joy.

"Some people don't ever know that kind of love," Barrick said. "We did."

The first few days passed in a blur.

"I feel like I was in such a brain fog," she said. "It felt like everything slowed down there at the beginning even though there was a million things going on. I just couldn't process information very effectively in the immediate aftermath. Everything felt long."

Jessica Barrick

Jessica Barrick (WDRB Photo)

All of a sudden, summer had passed, and when the kids went back to school that fall, a new blanket of sadness arrived.

"Josh always went to the meet-the-teacher night," Barrick said. "It was just all of these firsts outside of birthdays and things. And it was just the beginning."

The Barricks were beginning a life lived without Josh, their superhero taken from them.

"My oldest has asked 'Who's going to walk me down the aisle? Who is going to take me to the daddy-daughter dance?'" Barrick said. "And it's tough, because they were robbed. He was robbed. We were all robbed of so much.

"He was everything I've ever wanted. And to the kids, he's Superman. He was the dad in the pool with the kids on the shoulders, throwing them around. He'd do belly flops and just make the kids laugh. Anything he did, he was doing it for them."

As a woman of faith, Barrick said it hasn't been easy to stay steadfast.

"When something like this happens, it shakes your faith," she said. "'Why is this happening? How could you take him?' These questions and anger, it would be easy to kind of fall into that. But my faith is stronger than that."

She said the community wrapped their arms around her family and helped support her them through some of their hardest days. A GoFundMe page has raised more than $300,000 to support their children, but it was more than that, Barrick said — the meals, the visits and the emotional support her family desperately needed.

"It really restored some of my faith when I would get into those dark places," she said. "That helped kind of pull me out of it a little bit."

While Barrick hasn't been able to get rid of much of his stuff, when she was going through his closet, she found little notes and Bible verses in the pockets of his clothes.

"He was always, always working on himself," she said. "I never knew he was doing that. He just was always trying to be better.

"He wanted to be a good husband, a good dad. He wanted to make a good living and just be happy with our family. That's all he wanted. And he did that. He didn't get to enjoy it for as long as he should have, but he did that."

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