Calif. shooter had ammo to do further damage
No motive discovered for attack at Borderline
THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. — The number of victims in a shooting at a Southern California country music bar this month could have been much higher based on the amount of ammunition the gunman carried, investigators said Tuesday.
Authorities said they were no closer to figuring out why Ian David Long killed 12 people on Nov. 7 at the Borderline Bar and Grill but revealed that he left behind more than 150 bullets when he fatally shot himself.
There is no evidence Long was radicalized or was targeting an ex-girlfriend at the bar in the Los Angeles suburb of Thousand Oaks, investigators said at the first news conference since the week of the shooting. Officials previously said they were looking into the possibility he was targeting her.
Long, 28, a former Marine machine gunner and Afghanistan war veteran, posted on social media during a break in the gunfire that he wondered if people would think he was insane.
He deployed smoke grenades to create confusion and unleashed more than 50 rounds from a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol, Ventura County Sheriff Bill Ayub said. He didn’t use five of seven 30-round high-capacity magazines.
Such magazines are illegal to buy and possess in California but can easily be purchased in neighboring states. Long’s gun also had a flashlight with a laser sight.
After shooting bar employees and patrons, Long took a tactical position to ambush responding officers as more than 100 people ran for exits and jumped through broken windows to escape.
“As you can imagine, this was a terrifying experience for everyone who was there,” Ayub said. “Confusion and chaos can only begin to adequately describe the situation.”
Sgt. Ron Helus and a California Highway Patrol officer were there within minutes of 911 calls, and exchanged gunshots with the suspect. Helus, who was shot several times, was among those killed. None of the officers’ bullets hit Long.
Ayub also revealed that Long had a folding knife with him, and a coroner’s official said one victim had been stabbed in the neck, in addition to having several gunshot wounds.
Many of the victims were shot several times and at close range. Only one gunshot victim survived.
Investigators have interviewed hundreds of witnesses and gathered bullet casings, surveillance video and other evidence from the scene of the shooting, as well as seized items from Long’s home, including digital media, said Paul Delacourt, assistant director in charge of the FBI’S Los Angeles field office.
Most of the evidence taken by the FBI is being analyzed at its lab in Quantico, Virginia, Delacourt said.
Detectives hope items from the house help them learn why Long carried out the attack and that evidence from the bar better explains how he carried it out.
“There’s a process of both interviewing the people and getting the information investigators obtain and consolidating those to develop a timeline, and if we can discover what the motivation was for this attack,” Ventura County sheriff ’s Capt. Garo Kuredjian said. “They’ve been doing that pretty much around the clock since it happened.”