Las Vegas shooting survivors face terror again in California
MOTHER OF MASSACRE VICTIM CALLS FOR GUN CONTROL, NOT JUST WORDS OF SYMPATHY
When the first shots were fired at Borderline Bar & Grill, David Anderson immediately knew he was in the middle of a mass shooting. Because he had lived through one last year.
Anderson survived the attack at a country music festival in Las Vegas in October 2017 that left 58 people dead.
On Wednesday, he again survived a gunman indiscriminately firing at people enjoying country music, this time at college night at a well-loved bar. Twelve people were killed.
Molly Maurer shared her feelings on Facebook about being a two-time survivor: “I can’t believe I’m saying this again. I’m alive and home safe,” she wrote.
In Las Vegas, Anderson stood near the stage, on the same side of the field as the Mandalay Bay hotel, where a gunman fired shots out of the windows of his suite. Anderson saw a man next to him get shot and dove on top of his then-girlfriend to shield her. When the gunman stopped shooting, Anderson and his group of friends ran out an exit and to their hotel.
On Wednesday, he stood near the bar facing the door — something he now does all the time in public, a learnt behaviour from the Las Vegas shooting.
He saw the gunman walk in, take a military-like stance and fire. He ducked behind the bar and, when the gunman briefly stopped shooting, ran outside with his friend. “It was just a surreal shock, the shock factor,” he said.
Meanwhile, the mother of a young man who survived last year’s gun massacre in Las Vegas only to be killed by another gunman in a California bar this week has made an impassioned plea for gun control.
‘No more guns’
Susan Orfanos said in an interview that her son, Telemachus, was killed at Borderline after surviving Las Vegas.
“My son was in Las Vegas, and he came home. He didn’t come home last night,” she said. “I don’t want prayers; I don’t want thoughts; I want gun control ... No more guns.”
Telemachus Orfanos, 27, was a Navy veteran. “It’s a cruel thing to survive the worst mass shooting in the country in modern times, and then to be killed in another just a little more than a year later,” his father, Marc, said in an interview.