SoCal city mourns in wake of bar massacre
THOUSAND OAKS (AP) — The mourners gathered to hold hands, to sing and to wonder how one of the safest cities in America could become a killing zone.
Hundreds of people gathered Thursday evening to remember the dozen people shot and killed by a Marine veteran at the packed Borderline Bar & Grill the night before.
It was a scene of horror enacted in many places around the country in recent months, but never before in Thousand Oaks.
Terrified patrons who had gathered for the weekly line dancing and college night hurled barstools through windows to escape or threw their bodies protectively on top of friends as shots erupted. Twelve people were killed, including Ventura County sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus, a 29-year veteran nearing retirement who responded to reports of shots fired and was gunned down as he entered the bar.
He and other first responders “ran toward danger,” Sheriff Geoff Dean said at the vigil.
“When I told her (his wife) that we had lost her hero, I said to her: ‘Because of Ron, many lives were saved,’” Dean said. “And she looked at me through her tears and she said: ‘He would have wanted it that way.’”
The dead also included a man who had survived last year’s massacre in Las Vegas, Telemachus Orfanos, 22.
“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts,” his mother, Susan Schmidt-Orfanos, said earlier. “I want those bastards in Congress — they need to pass gun control so no one’s else has a child that doesn’t come home.”
The city of about 130,000 people, about 64 kilometers from Los Angeles, just across the county line, is annually listed as one of the safest cities in America.
“Hope has sustained communities, very much like Thousand Oaks, through the exact same triages of mass shootings,” said Andy Fox, the city’s outgoing mayor. “Tonight Thousand Oaks takes its place with those cities, who in order to move forward will rely on hope. we are Thousand Oaks strong.”
The motive for the attack was under investigation.
The killer, Ian David Long, 28, was a former machine gunner and Afghanistan war veteran who was interviewed by police at his home last spring after an episode of agitated behavior that authorities were told might be posttraumatic stress disorder.
Neighbors of Long described the man as distant in public but combative with his mother inside the suburban Los Angeles home the two shared.
One ruckus in April was so extreme that they called law enforcement. Authorities brought in a mental health specialist who concluded that Long could not be involuntarily committed for psychiatric observation but worried the Marine veteran might have post-traumatic stress disorder.