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THOUSAND OAKS, CALIFORNIA – Another mass shootout in the United States left another region stricken with grief, grief and questions over what could have motivated someone to shoot down a dozen people in a western bar.
The massacre that killed 12 people – including an 18-year-old man who had just started university, a Marine and a sergeant who rushed to confront the gunman – also left behind uncertainty about the way a neighbor-shooter was concerned and that prompted a mental health check of the police was able to legally obtain the handgun used in the attack.
The carnage of Thousand Oaks, a community of about 130,000 people near Los Angeles, was very much like recent shootings in churches, cinemas, schools, community centers and offices. Police said 28-year-old Ian David Long, a former sailor, opened fire on a security guard with a .45 caliber handgun, then went inside, filming the staff and then guests of Borderline Bar & Grill. he had gathered for his university evening.
[The 12 lives lost in the California bar shooting]
When Sergeant Ron Helus of the Ventura County Sheriff's Office went inside to confront him. The former officer was shot repeatedly and fatally. The officers then found Long in a bar office, dead from a seemingly self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The investigators are still trying to figure out what could have motivated Long, looking for clues to his state of mind in search of personal, car and social media accounts. Sheriff Geoff Dean, of Ventura County, said it did not seem like Long was targeting particular people inside the bar.
"Of course, he had something in his head that would make him do something like that," Dean told reporters. "So he obviously had problems."
Dean, who had already announced his intention to retire at the end of Friday, said he had spent his last days in power reacting to the shooting: "It can not be worse."
[Inside, it was ‘like hell.’ Another mass shooting in another public place claims 12 lives]
Those who escaped the disaster – some of whom had also survived the massacre of 58 people at a country music festival in Las Vegas last year – described the gunman as methodical and silent.
"It was a very stern face, with a straight, focused face," said David Anderson, 23, of Newbury Park, who experienced the Las Vegas shootout and the Thousand Oaks attack. "Did not say anything."
People who had met him in the past have described him as being angry and troubled. Attempts to contact Long's mother and other relatives were unsuccessful. The neighbors of the house where Long lived with her mother, Colleen Long, recounted a tendency to annoying behavior that left some unsuspecting to hear that he had been named a shooter.
Carol Richardson, who lives nearby, said that a friend had gone home several times to "calm him down," and his 19-year-old daughter, Morgan, said, "We have always knew that he had problems.
What followed the ravages at the border has become a sinister ritual across the country. The information on the shots gives way to the stories of several people struck or killed. Then stories of chaos, horror and heroism emerge from those who escaped. And, as was the case after the Parkland, Florida, attacks in Sutherland Springs, Texas, questions began to appear about red flags before the bloodshed and what officials law enforcement could or should have done.
[Thousand Oaks gunman had ‘several contacts’ with police over the years]
In at least one case, Long's problems attracted the attention of the police. Dean said the police met Long in April when they were called for trouble.
Long was acting irrationally, so they set up a crisis response team to meet him, Dean said. They discussed the possibility that he "is suffering from PTSD," said Dean, noting Long's service in the Marines. (He has long been deployed to Afghanistan between 2010 and 2011 and left the Marines as a corporal in March 2013.)
This team "met him, talked to him and cleared him" and did not have the feeling that she could detain him under an "order" 5150, "Dean told reporters. Under an order 5150, a person considered "a danger to others or to herself" can be arrested for up to 72 hours, which would have prohibited her from possessing or possessing firearms.
Police did not disclose more information about the April meeting and about how Long was dispelled, but the neighbors recalled hearing alarming noises and shouting from home in the middle of the night. Police faced deadlock as the police targeted the house with rifles and rifles, a neighbor said. In the end, Long was cleared and Dean said that it seemed that the Glock handgun used in the attack had been legally purchased.
This also echoes the findings of previous firing outbursts. An FBI study of active shooting between 2000 and 2013 found that most assailants, usually men or boys, carried legally obtained firearms. The study also revealed that the shooters had worried the people around them before the attacks and noted that law enforcement officials were able to verify that 25% of these perpetrators had diagnosed mental health problems.
In Thousand Oaks and beyond, the shooting sparked vigils and new calls for new gun control measures. Schools were closed and a center of the city reserved for families in mourning.
[The Las Vegas shooting survivors who went on to survive this latest massacre]
Dean, the sheriff, had planned to attend his retirement party on Saturday, crowning eight years as county sheriff and 41 years in the department. He had just returned home Wednesday night after someone else's retirement party when he received an SMS on the set of the bar. He put on his uniform and headed for the Borderline for a sleepless night.
On Thursday, he went to tell the families of the people killed at the border that their relatives were among the victims. His last day of work would be devoted to the response to the massacre, while the retirement party scheduled for Saturday was canceled.
"It will not happen," said Dean while he was in the street near the border on Thursday afternoon. "I'll be here tomorrow and I do not know where I'll be on Saturday."
Berman reported from Washington. Katie Zezima in Thousand Oaks, California, and William Wan, Frances Stead Sellers, Alice Crites, Julie Tate and Jennifer Jenkins in Washington contributed to the writing of this report.
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