Dana Mitchell (59) of Louisville, Kentucky is a mother like millions of others around the country. She works hard and cares for her aging father and three children who are, “Grown children…well, biologically grown, anyways.” She has a passion for travel, noting that she has a personal goal to travel somewhere new every year. Some of her most recent travel destinations have included Asheville, NC, New Orleans, LA, and several different parts of Italy, all in the last several years. Dana is very personable and has a wonderful sense of humor. She works at Old National Bank as the Treasury Management Officer for Louisville, Lexington, and Southern Indiana. On a spring Monday morning in 2023, Dana and several of her colleagues were attacked in their office by an employee in what would become one of the most tragic mass shooter events in Louisville history.
Early Monday morning on April 10th, 2023 at 8:38 a.m., Dana and her colleagues were gathering for their Monday morning meeting at Old National Bank. “We were at work, and there were 13 of us in the conference room having our normal Monday morning meeting. Some of us had been laughing, joking, and teasing one of the guys about his tan; he had just been on spring break, and we were all laughing with him when we started the meeting. One of the guys was talking when something caught my eye, even though my back was to the wall, which was all glass. I turned around to look and I saw the shooter standing there with a gun; I knew it was an AR-15. The first thought that went through my mind was, ‘He bought a gun over the weekend and brought it in to show us.’ It never occurred to me that he was going to use it until he did. When he fired that first shot, he shot at someone walking by in the hallway. Seeing the gun and hearing the shot, I immediately knew what was happening; other people didn’t. They just heard the sound. Some of them explained it as sounding like an explosion, or that someone doing construction work nearby had dropped something. Everybody however reacted quickly. I immediately dove away towards the corner and got down as flat as I could, but was still open. I was shot after I was on the ground.”
The shooter had opened fire in the bank and shot several employees, including Dana.
“I know from the reports that the whole thing lasted a little over 20 seconds, right there in the conference room, but it seemed like it lasted forever. It seemed like the gunfire just kept going, and going, and going. I knew the moment I was hit because I felt it, but strangely enough there was no pain. Everybody that I’ve talked to says that’s normal, because of adrenaline, shock, whatever. But when people ask what it’s like to get shot, I just have to say I knew that it happened, but there wasn’t any pain.”
“I just laid there, as quiet and still as I could. I tried to hold my breath at times, in case he came back in, because I didn’t want him to see me breathing. As long as I could hear gunshots, I knew where he was in the building, and knew he wasn’t there on top of us. It was when there were no gunshots that it was scarier, because we didn’t know where he was, if he had come back, if he was standing over us…we just didn’t know.”
Louisville Metro Police Department officers responded quickly, and engaged the shooter within moments of the first shots being fired. Dana recalls the moment, noting, “Then there was a barrage of gunfire, and I could tell it wasn’t just his weapon. We had already heard the sirens so we knew the police were there, and there was tremendous relief when that barrage of gunfire happened, and then all of a sudden, it was quiet.”
“Then we started hearing voices. People were coming through, and LMPD were announcing themselves. It was just the biggest relief, like, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to live, we’re going to live.’ But then, when we got up, and turned around to see what was there…that was rough. One of the people in the room begged and begged for someone to help her. She just kept saying, ‘I’ve been shot, I’ve been shot, oh my God, please don’t let me die, I’m going to die.’ I kept thinking, ‘Please be quiet, please be quiet, he’s going to come back.’”
Once officers had neutralized the shooter, Dana and other surviving colleagues were instructed to evacuate. “When I got up and saw the bodies and had to walk over them…that was something you don’t forget. That’s not going to go away. When we got to the front of the building, the shooter was lying on the ground, and we had to step over his legs.”
“I walked out of that building [after police arrived], walked to the ambulance, and they took us to UofL Health. I have never seen anything like that, the amount of people at the ER waiting for us. They were all about us…they were amazing and unbelievable. They let my family and friends come back to the room, they didn’t care how many people there were in there. They tried to answer whatever questions we had about our coworkers…it was very respectful, considerate, I was amazed at how they did their job. I can’t say anything but praises for the care we received there.”
In short order, Dana had received care, and had begun the difficult endeavor of processing what had happened. “Laying there I remember thinking, ‘Is this really happening? This happens on TV, it happens somewhere else. It doesn’t happen here, and it doesn’t happen to me.’ The shock value was intense. We knew we were safe, but that we had to get out of there and get away.”
“I was shot in the back on the right-hand side just inside the shoulder blade area, the initial wound was about 8 inches long. They had to sew the wound up because it was too big. The bottom of the wound did get infected 7 days later, so they removed a few stitches and continued to clean the wound. I also had bleeding on the left side of my neck from bullet fragments or shrapnel.”
Though Dana was able to recover from the physical injuries she sustained, the mental scarring from the event still resonates. “Months later we went back down to the building to walk around the building. In the conference room on the floor where I was, there’s a bullet hole right above where our heads were. It’s freaky. I felt it was beneficial to go there and see it, obviously everything had been cleaned up for the most part, but unless you knew what had happened, you wouldn’t know what had occurred. We also got to see security footage from the bank's interior cameras so we could see where he went after the conference room, which answered a lot of questions for me. Especially, ‘What if he had come back?’ Once we saw his behavior and where he went, it took a lot of the ‘What if?’ away for me.”
Dana was only at UofL for one night, or two days. “I didn’t have to do any rehab or PT because the bullet didn’t hit anything [critical].”
“The hardest part has been the grief and dealing with the loss of so many at once. Two of the individuals I was very close with. I liked all of them, we all worked really well together, but two I was really close with. That’s been very hard. I can’t imagine how hard the loss and grief has been for their families. The first Thanksgiving, Christmas, birthday without your loved ones…I can’t imagine. I have gone to therapy, and it’s been a Godsend for me.”
After some time, Dana began the difficult journey of getting back to living after a life-altering event. “I went back to work after 3 months, I waited until the wound was completely healed. The week before I went back to work, I went to Florida on vacation. That was the first time I had gone anywhere. It was a little scary, but I went with a girl from work, and it was comforting to have someone there who knew the experiences we had gone through and what we might be dealing with while we were away. Getting away was refreshing and scary at the same time. Little things can trigger you, and sometimes those triggers make sense, and sometimes they don’t. One time we were walking down the street and there was a loud noise and immediately my heart started pounding. It was a dumpster; the garbage truck had picked up the dumpster and slammed it and the unexpected noise upset me. Thunder Over Louisville, 4th of July, didn’t bother me because I knew those were fireworks, but loud unexpected noises are upsetting. I want to believe that reactions like that will return to normal some day. I just know that it’s going to take time.”
Dana notes that this same event has happened to many others both throughout the country and throughout the world. The advice she shared is, “I would tell others in a similar position to let themselves feel the emotions. Give into it, don’t try to be strong; if you need to cry, cry. Take care of yourself first. It would be really easy to not leave the house, but you can’t let that overtake you. You have to keep going. Don’t let the fear overtake you. I’ve always been a very strong-willed person, but in the past year there've been many times when I haven’t felt that way. But you have to let yourself feel things without letting it control you.”
One year after the shooting, Dana continues to live and travel in spite of what she has experienced. She recently returned from a girl’s trip to New Orleans for Mardi Gras, recalling, “We did the parades, went to the French Quarter, we went to the French market, got to have charbroiled oysters, and so much more. I’m also going to Italy in June on a food and wine tour.”
When asked if she had anything more to add, Dana said, “The only thing I’d say is there needs to be some change with gun laws. Something needs to change, I don’t know what the answer is. I went to Frankfort to help with getting a bill passed as a participant in the room. I’m all for the second amendment, absolutely, but I don’t feel like when our forefathers were writing that, they had any idea that those arms would turn into what we have today in the form of assault weapons. There needs to be something done, because doing nothing has gotten us nowhere.”
Dana Mitchell.
Compassionate Mother, Loving Daughter.
Trauma Survivor.
