LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Dana Mitchell survived the Old National Bank shooting, but memories from that day will live with her for the rest of her life.

She had just sat down in the conference room at Old National Bank in downtown Louisville on Monday, April 10, 2023, with other bank executives. They were getting ready to start an 8:30 a.m. meeting. Mitchell looked over her shoulder and saw her coworker, 25-year-old Connor Sturgeon with a rifle but her brain didn't recognize the threat until a few seconds later.

"My first thought was 'He bought a gun and brought it in to show us,'" Mitchell said nearly a year later. "It did not occur to me that he was going to use it. When you see someone, you don't automatically go to the worst-case scenario." 

Mitchell said she then saw the unthinkable. The shooter fired at their co-worker, Dallas Schwartz, in the hall before turning to the conference room.

"I just reacted as quickly as I could," she said. "And the person next to me ran and he was able to get out. Josh (Barrick) was right behind him and Josh didn't make it. So, I mean, literally split seconds made a difference."

Mitchell dove to the ground and tried to crawl out of the direct line of fire. Still, she was hit in the back.

Dana Mitchell and her daughter

Dana Mitchell and her daughter at UofL Hospital as Mitchell recovered from surgery.

"I remember thinking it was hot and I knew that I had been shot," she said. "I don't remember pain. I just remember laying there thinking, 'Is this really happening? Is this really happening?'

"I tried to control my breathing, tried to lay there and not move. I would even hold my breath for a while. So, in case he did come back in the room, he wouldn't see me breathing and finish the job." 

They could still could still hear gunshots for a moment after Sturgeon left the room. But the silence, in contrast, was deafening.

"When there was no gunfire and things were quiet and you don't know where he's at, you don't know if he's coming back," Mitchell said. "Those were the scarier moments."

It was agonizing lying there, she said, as one of her coworkers who had been shot begged for help.

"There was nothing we could do," she said. 

When Louisville Metro Police officers arrived, they announced who they were and asked those who could walk out of the room to put their hands up.

'That's when the relief finally was like 'OK, we're going to be all right,'" Mitchell said.

But there were some who didn't make it.

"We had to walk past our coworkers that were shot," she said. "The survivors guilt has been very real and difficult. I push through and make myself do things because I'm not going to allow what happened to control my life."

When she got to the hospital, she was taken into surgery, and it wasn't until afterward she was able to borrow a phone and get ahold of her oldest son. Within an hour, both her sons made it to UofL Hospital. Her daughter, in Montana, was there by the next morning.

"She walked down and she just burst out crying," Mitchell said. "But it was wonderful to be able to have them there."

Mitchell discharged from the hospital the day after the shooting. Her daughter temporarily moved in to help nurse Mitchell's gunshot wound. And after three months recovering, Mitchell went back to work at the bank's new location at 400 West Market Street. 

"There's this sad feeling when I see it," Mitchell said of the Preston Pointe building on Main Street, where the shooting took place. "It was just something else that was taken from us that day."

'It can happen to you'

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.

Mitchell was one of eight others who were shot and survived, and the the emotional toll of all that torments her each night. 

"The one thing I see every night when I go to bed is when I turned around and looked over my shoulder and saw him in the hallway with a gun," she said. "That's what I see. The other images are there, but that's the one that's always present."

But she's determined to fight back against her those memories.

"I have to literally tell myself to stop," Mitchell said. "We'll never get over it. It's not something you get over, (but) you just learn to make it part of who you are." 

Now, a year later, she said it's important for her to share her experience.

"It can happen to you," she said. "But you can't live scared to death all the time. Be more cautious. Be prepared."

Mitchell is in a group text with other survivors of the shooting, and they often lean on each other to get through the hard days.

"We went through something horrible," she said. "It's my hope — and hope of the others — we'll use it for good."

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