CINCINNATI — Five years ago, at 9:06 a.m. on Sept. 6, a 29-year-old man dressed in business attire entered the Fifth Third Center in downtown Cincinnati through the loading dock and opened fire with a 9mm handgun. He proceeded to the building lobby, firing 35 rounds in four minutes and 28 seconds.
Cincinnati police officers arrived and fired 11 rounds through the building's plate glass entrance, killing the shooter, Omar Enrique Santa-Perez. Police reported him down at 9:11 a.m.
The impact of those four and a half minutes is still felt today: Three people were killed, two more were gravely wounded and hundreds working in and around Fountain Square were affected.
The three men killed were Prudhvi Raj Kandepi, 25, a consultant at Fifth Third; Richard Newcomer, 64, a superintendent for Gilbane Building Co.; and Luis Felipe Calderón, 48, a manager at Fifth Third.
Brian Sarver and Whitney Austin were both shot but survived.
The response
A Cincinnati police officer called in the shooting to dispatch at 9:07 a.m., according to radio traffic.
Hamilton County Sheriff's Office Deputy James York was walking out of the Hamilton County Job and Family Services building when he heard the call on his radio.
"I pulled over just north of the garage. I got out, I deployed my M16 and linked up with the CPD officers and we went up the steps," York told WCPO 9 on the one year anniversary of the shooting. "And then Eric turned around and said we need to go to the Walnut side to contain him, so I just turned around and immediately dropped down and went around to the Walnut side. I started up the steps, I got to the door, grabbed the handle, took a deep breath and then I just, you know, I just figured, 'you gotta go.'"
As York entered the building, he saw that Cincinnati officers already were engaging the shooter across the lobby from where York was located. Four Cincinnati police officers engaged the shooter, exchanging gunfire.
Specialist Gregory Toyeas ran past the shooter and shot at him, forcing him to run toward the other officers at the scene.
Officer Jennifer Chilton also shot at the gunman, as did officers Antonio Etter and Eric Kaminsky. Etter left a nearby off-duty detail to respond.
All four were among a group of officers to receive the city's Medal of Valor for their actions that day, and then-Mayor John Cranley later named them all Cincinnatian of the Year during his State of the City address. Officer Al Staples won the Medal of Valor, too, for the aid he provided.
Lives lost, lives changed
Kandepi, the youngest victim, was born in Tenali, India. He was a graduate student and consultant at Fifth Third Bank.
Hamilton County Coroner Lakshmi Sammarco memorialized him on Facebook, saying she had met him before at the Hindu temple in Cincinnati.
"How do you tell parents who live 10,000 miles away that they will never see their son again because of a senseless shooting in a foreign country?" she wrote.
Newcomer was a husband, father and grandfather who worked for the Gilbane Building Company, a Providence, Rhode Island-based company. A company spokesperson said his family described him as an avid Bengals fan who loved the city that he literally helped to build.
Newcomer had been working on a project on the third floor of the Fifth Third Center.
Calderón was a husband and a father of two. In a GoFundMe account set up for his family in the aftermath of the shooting, friends described him as someone with "a zest for life, a great sense of humor and a positive outlook on things that he shared with all of us, his friends and his long time coworkers in Sabre Latin America."
Brian Sarver started his day with a meeting in the lobby of Fifth Third Center with Newcomer, discussing a renovation project.
"My understanding is he (the shooter) was just kind of sitting in the Pot Belly space just looking out," Sarver told WCPO 9 on the one-year anniversary of the shooting. "So we're just standing there talking and then I hear a very loud pop. And I knew it was a gun because I've been around guns all my life. I was the first one shot."
Sarver was rushed to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center, where doctors discovered a bullet passed right through him, entering through his back and exiting through the front.
His wife, Lisa, was with women in her Bible study group when one of them got a breaking news alert about the shooting.
"I started texting Brian and wasn't getting a response, which is kind of normal because he's so busy in meetings throughout the day," she told WCPO 9 one month after the shooting. "But as time went on, we were getting really worried and pretty upset."
Sarver needed multiple surgeries, but he survived.
"For me its about focusing on the positive," Sarver said. "I can reflect on all the negative things that happened in the lobby. It can really beat you down, it can really get you down. I know that's hard to comprehend as a positive situation in that moment, but I can also, I can thank god that I lived through that."
Whitney Austin, the vice president of Fifth Third Bank at the time, was heading into the lobby of Fifth Third Center. She was wearing headphones, continuing a conference call she'd begun in the car on her drive to Cincinnati from Louisville.
"I definitely remember walking up to the revolving door and seeing that glass that was still fully intact, but it never shattered," Austin told WCPO 9 on the one-year anniversary of the shooting. "And I thought, well, that's kind of weird. Maybe somebody threw a rock at the door. But that was it. That's all I thought."
"Then I pushed on the door, and from the moment I pushed on the door is when I was hit by the first barrage of bullets. And they were so forceful and intense that I just dropped. I just collapsed at the bottom of that revolving door."
In all, Austin was shot a dozen times. She underwent hours of surgery and more hours of physical and occupational therapy.
But she survived.
"Cincy Strong"
Just one hour after the shooter was killed and the attack halted, Fountain Square — a normally bustling hub — was completely empty, encircled by a single line of yellow crime scene tape.
The echo of the shots fired that day were felt well after that yellow tape was torn down.
Employees who worked nearby when the shooting happened leaned on CPD's victim's services workers to process the trauma they experienced.
"They were from all different walks of life," Karen Rumsey, with CPD's Victims Assistance Liaison Unit told WCPO on the first anniversary of the shooting. "You have people that were working in the Dunkin' Donuts, in the Pot Belly, and you had business executives. From all walks of life, all different people that were experiencing this all at the same time, but through different lenses."
Busloads of civilians were brought to the Queensgate building that houses CPD's criminal investigations and special investigations units, to speak with the victim's assistance professionals.
In the days that followed, Rumsey said people whose lives were impacted by the shooting were still coming to her work, sometimes in large groups.
Since surviving the shooting, Austin has taken a new approach to her life through Whitney/Strong, working to find common-sense ways to reduce gun violence that don't conflict with the right of people to own firearms.
She's spent the years since recovering to help advocate for different kinds of legislation she hopes could lower the number of people impacted by gun violence each year.
But she's disheartened that what happened to her in Cincinnati five years ago is still happening to others.
"Most days when I think back to September 6, I was in my own little protected bubble in the hospital really high on life that I had survived this horrific thing," said Austin. "I didn't experience it the way the community experienced it. And then to fast forward four years later for it to happen almost all over again in Louisville, and now I'm a member of the community and I'm witnessing it. That was really tough."
Austin said she's frustrated with a lack of change, and the way many people react when they hear she wants to find solutions to gun violence — especially in instances when she's trying to find those solutions without compromise on the Second Amendment.
"I just need more people to participate along with me and along with Whitney/Strong. In many ways, you know, there are some forms of gun violence that people have sadly become accustomed to, but other forms have increased in terms of volume in the last five to 10 years," said Austin. "And it's almost as if society is unwilling to recognize that we've shifted from what was a much more safe country to a less safe country."
Extending past the mass violence like she experienced, Austin hopes Whitney/Strong can mitigate the damage from many different kinds of gun violence. Gun-related accidents and suicides have also increased, she said.
"There is a solution," said Austin. "There are many solutions, but you've got to get involved. You've got to recognize that the problem exists and then recognize that you have a role to play. And then, if you can get there, there's so much to be done out in the community every week."
To commemorate the five year anniversary of the shooting, Whitney/Strong came together with Fifth Third at Fountain Square to remember those that were lost that day. Current Mayor Aftab Pureval and Vice-Mayor Jan-Michele Kearney were also in attendance.
"We're just coming to remember the lives that were lost that day. To reflect on hope, to reflect on how to move forward," said Sarver, who also attended the remembrance event. "On how this city is grieving from what happened. A lot of people were affected. A lot of families were affected."
Through it years, Whitney/Strong has helped to teach people about the safe storage of firearms that could help decrease the amount of accidental shootings, the warning signs of suicide and even how to apply tourniquets to save a life if tragedy does strike.
She said she hopes that, with all the skills her organization strives to teach, any person could use those tools to make a difference in their own community.
"I hope that living in America, living in Ohio starts to feel different," said Austin. "That we're all just a little bit less on edge that, you know, one argument gone awry could lead to an incident of gun violence, or dropping kids off at school is a dangerous proposition anymore. But I want us to feel different and I think that will be the result of a decrease in violence."
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