Knapp said he helped people hide behind a pool table and then fled outside, alerting people on an outdoor smoking patio and helping carry a victim to an ambulance. “It took a couple of seconds for people to realize what was going on and once that happened it was just utter chaos,” he said.
Nearby California Lutheran University canceled classes on Thursday while Pepperdine University, about 20 miles away, planned a prayer service.Ĭole Knapp, 19, was inside the bar when the shooting began and told Reuters he saw the gunman walk in and stop at the counter as if to pay a cover charge before he heard gunshots ring out and a young woman at the counter hit with multiple rounds. The Borderline is popular with students and was hosting a College Country Night at the time of the shooting. Trump ordered US flags to be flown at half-staff at public buildings and grounds. PST (0730 GMT) to confront the gunman.Īlso read: US Gun Control Debate: Is the Right to Own a Weapon Greater Than the Right to Live? He and a California Highway Patrol officer were the first to arrive at the bar just before 11:30 p.m. Ventura County Sheriff’s Office Sergeant Ron Helus, a 29-year veteran, was killed inside. Long shot an unarmed security guard outside the bar before going inside, where he fired on security staff, CNN reported. The massacre was the latest shooting rampage in the US amid a fierce debate over gun control.Īfter a man fatally shot 11 worshipers at a Pittsburgh synagogue last month, US President Donald Trump said their deaths could have been prevented if an armed guard had been stationed inside the temple. Police and FBI officers wait outside the home of the suspect in a shooting incident at a Thousand Oaks bar, in Newbury Park, California. The Ventura County Sheriff’s Department said 21 people had been treated for injuries and released at area hospitals. There is blood everywhere and the suspect is part of that.” “They couldn’t get him to come out, so it was like a standoff for four or five hours.”īerge, who took care of Long’s mother’s dogs, said she told him following that incident she worried her son might take his own life but did not fear he would hurt her.ĭean said he had been told that 150 to 200 people were in the Borderline at the time Long opened fire, adding: “It could have been much, much worse.”Īsked what the scene inside the bar was like, Dean said, “Like … hell.” Earlier he had described it as “a horrific scene in there. “He was raving hell in the house, you know, kicking holes in the walls and stuff and one of the neighbors was concerned and called the police,” Richard Berge, who lived one block away from the home, told Reuters. Mental health specialists talked with Long and determined that no further action was necessary, the sheriff said. “Obviously, he had something going on in his head that would cause him to do something like this,” Dean said.ĭean told reporters that in April officers had gone to Long’s home in nearby Newbury Park, about 4 miles (6 km) from the barto answer a disturbance call and found him agitated. Long was in the Marine Corps from 2008 to 2013, reaching the rank of corporal and serving as a machine gunner in Afghanistan, and the sheriff said he may have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder.
45 caliber Glock handgun equipped with a high-capacity magazine, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. Long opened fire, seemingly at random, inside the barn-style, Western-themed bar at about 11:30 p.m.
“We will be sure to paint a picture of the state of mind of the subject and do our best to identify a motivation,” Delacourt said, adding that the FBI would investigate any possible “radicalization” or links to militant groups. Paul Delacourt, assistant director in charge of the Los Angeles FBI office, said it was too early to speculate on the shooter’s motives but that he appeared to have acted alone. The gunman, identified by police as 28-year-old Ian David Long, was found dead of an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound following the Wednesday night massacre at Borderline Bar and Grill in Thousand Oaks, a suburb 40 miles (64 km) northwest of downtown Los Angeles, law enforcement officials said. California: A former US Marine combat veteran opened fire in a Los Angeles area bar packed with line-dancing college students, killing 12 people in a mass shooting that stunned a bucolic Southern California community with a reputation for safety.