CALIFORNIA MASS SHOOTING LEAVES 12 PEOPLE DEAD

A GUNMAN opened fire on a crowd at a country dance bar holding a weekly “college night” in Southern California, killing 12 people and sending hundreds fleeing in terror including some who used barstools to break windows and escape, authorities said yesterday. The gunman was later found dead at the scene.

The dead from the shooting Wednesday night also included 11 people inside the bar and a sheriff ’s sergeant who was the first officer inside the door, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. “It’s a horrific scene in there,” Dean told a news conference in the parking lot of the Borderline Bar & Grill. “There’s blood everywhere.”

The gunman at the country dance bar was tall and wearing all black with a hood over his head and his face part- ly covered, witnesses told TV stations at the scene. He first fired on a person working the door, then appeared to open fire at random at the people inside, they said. Many more people had more minor injuries, including some that came from their attempt to flee, Dean said.

The massacre was the latest mass shooting in the United States and came less than two weeks after a gunman killed 11 people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. Last year saw a two of the deadliest mass shootings in modern U.S. history. The Last Vegas shooting rekindled a years-long national debate over whether easy access to firearms was contributing to the trend of mass shootings. In October 2017, a gunman in Las Vegas fired down from a hotel room at an outdoor concert, killing 58 people and wounding hundreds. Texas marks the second mass shooting in the U.S. last year. The carnage saw a gunman wearing a bulletproof vest use an assault rifle to open fire on the congregation of a small-town Texas church, killing 26 people and wounding 20 more. The shooting occurred on the eighth anniversary of the Nov. 5, 2009, massacre of 13 people at the Fort Hood Army base in central Texas. The gunman, identified as 26-year-old Devin Kelley was described by authorities as a young white male who was found dead in his vehicle after being confronted by a local resident. The massacre renewed questions about why someone with a history of violence could amass an arsenal of lethal weaponry.