The Latest: Bank donates $1M to help shooting victims

CINCINNATI – The Latest on the Sept. 6 shootings in a Cincinnati bank building (all times local):

5:30 p.m.

The Fifth Third Foundation has made a $1 million donation to help families touched by the shootings at the bank’s Cincinnati headquarters last week.

The bank announced Friday it has started the Cincinnati Strong Victims Fund in partnership with the National Center for Victims of Crime. It hopes to match its $1 million gift with donations from community members.

The fund will benefit victims’ families and people who suffered physical or psychological trauma when the gunman opened fire the morning of Sept. 6.

Fifth Third Bancorp Chairman Greg Carmichael says over the past week he realized that “people sincerely want to help.” Online donors have given almost $5,000 to the fund’s GoFundMe page in about five hours.

People can make donations online or at a Fifth Third banking centre.

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2:05 p.m.

A prosecutor is praising the Cincinnati police officers who killed a gunman at a downtown office building as heroic.

Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters on Friday cleared the four officers who responded within minutes to the shootings at Fifth Third Bancorp headquarters. The officers killed 29-year-old Omar Enrique Santa Perez after Perez fatally shot three people and wounded two others.

Deters says he’ll “never know how many lives” the officers saved that day.” Police say Perez carried some 200 rounds of ammunition when he entered the bank building lobby the morning of Sept. 6.

Both survivors are out of the hospital. Whitney Austin, who was shot at least a dozen times, returned home Tuesday but faces what her husband calls “a long road” in recovering physically and mentally.