Country music fans endure 2nd mass shooting in barely a year

California club had become haven for survivors of Vegas attack

THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. – Barely a year after surviving a massacre at a country music festival in Las Vegas, Brendan Kelly found himself in a terrifyingly familiar scene.

Kelly, 22, said he was dancing with friends at a bar in suburban Los Angeles on Wednesday night when the bullets began flying.

When the gunfire was over, 12 people were dead, including a Navy veteran who had lived through the deadliest mass shooting in modern U.S. history a year ago.

“I already didn’t wish it on anybody to begin with for the first time,” Kelly said outside his home in Thousand Oaks. “The second time around doesn’t get any easier.”

Kelly, a Marine, said he heard “pop, pop” at Borderline Bar and Grill and instantly knew it was gunfire.

“The chills go up your spine. You don’t think it’s real – again,” he said.

The mother of the 27-year-old Navy man killed in the latest attack, Telemachus “Tel” Orfanos, said her son survived Vegas only to die inside Borderline, less than 10 minutes from his home.

“Here are my words: I want gun control,” said Susan Schmidt-Orfanos, her voice shaking with grief and rage. “I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts.”

She said she wanted Congress “to pass gun control so no one else has a child that doesn’t come home.”

Orfanos’ father, Marc Orfanos, told the Ventura County Star: “It is particularly ironic that after surviving the worst mass shooting in modern history, he went on to be killed in his hometown.”