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12 killed in mass US shooting

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THOUSAND OAKS: A gunman opened fire on a crowd of mostly college students and young adults dancing at a crowded country and western bar in a suburb of Los Angeles late on Wednesday night, killing 12 people including a sheriff’s deputy, police said.


Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean named the suspect as Ian Long, aged 28. He told a news conference Long had likely shot himself and that he was a veteran who had served in the US Marine Corps.


He said he appeared to have shot at random inside the club, using only a Glock .45-caliber handgun. There was no known motive, he said.


An unknown number of people were wounded in the shooting at the Borderline Bar and Grill, a popular venue with college students and young adults in the suburb of Thousand Oaks. Wednesday was dubbed “College Country Night”.


It was the third mass shooting in the United States in under two weeks, six days after the death of two women at a yoga class in Tallahassee, Florida and 12 days after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh. “It’s a horrific scene in there,” Dean said earlier. “There is blood everywhere and the suspect is part of that.”


A witness to the shootings, Taylor Von Molt, 21, who said she was a promotor at the bar, said the gunman wore a black mask with a bandana covering the bottom of his face, and a black hoodie.


“I heard what I thought was a balloon pop,” she told CNN.


“I was confused because we didn’t have any balloons. I saw him, then I saw him fire his weapon one more time. I ran to the nearest exit and tripped and fell on the way and people kept running on top of me.”


Von Molt said she and others from nearby California Lutheran University often gathered on Wednesday night to line dance to country music. Many of those at the bar were regulars, she said.


— Reuters


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