By Faith Karimi, Jason Hanna, Joe Sutton, & Steve Almasy – cnn.com – November 9, 2018

At the first gunshot, people dancing and having a good time at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, tried to process the pop they just heard.

The pops kept coming and many in the place dived to the floor, searching for a way out. Some people moved to put themselves between the shooter and his potential targets.

Teylor Whittler, a California Lutheran University student, said there was little screaming, just gunfire and a stampede of people.

“There were at least 50 people that all tried getting up at once and run out the back door. I ended up getting caught in the ground and stumbled over by multiple people,” Whittler told CNN affiliate KABC. “Everyone just yelled, ‘Run, he’s coming!'”

The gunman, a US Marines veteran, arrived at the bar on Wednesday night with a pistol, officials said. He shot an unarmed security guard outside the bar, then went in and continued shooting, injuring other security workers, employees and patrons, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. Ian David Long, killed 12 people before apparently taking his own life.

“It’s a horrific scene in there,” the sheriff told reporters at a media briefing. “There is blood everywhere and the suspect is part of that.”

The casualties included a veteran sheriff’s deputy who was nearby talking to his wife on the phone when the call came over the radio for an active shooter.

“(The deputy said), ‘Hey, I have to handle a call. I love you, I’ll talk to you later,’ ” the sheriff said.

Sgt. Ron Helus rushed into the bar as gunshots continued; he was killed.

Investigators believe Long, 28, used a legally purchased .45-caliber Glock 21 with an extended magazine during the shooting, and they’re trying to figure out why he did it.

“We have no idea what the motive was at this point,” Dean said Thursday afternoon.

Authorities have identified a Facebook post believed to have been made by the shooter around the time of the attack, according to a law enforcement official familiar with the ongoing investigation.

In it, the writer says: “I hope people call me insane… (laughing emojis).. wouldn’t that just be a big ball of irony? Yeah.. I’m insane, but the only thing you people do after these shootings is ‘hopes and prayers’.. or ‘keep you in my thoughts’… every time… and wonder why these keep happening…”

When CNN read the post to a friend of Long’s, who did not want to be publicly identified, the friend said, “That does not sound like Ian to me at all. I don’t know what was going through his head when he wrote this. It must have been terrible.”

Dance floor packed when shooting inside started

The shooting broke out during the Western-style bar’s weekly line dancing and college night open to people 18 and older. People dropped to the floor and hid behind barstools in stunned silence, witnesses said. Others jumped over chairs and broke windows to get out.

Sarah Rose DeSon told CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360˚” that her friend Cody Coffman saved her life. DeSon said she was paralyzed by fear as she saw the gunman pointing his gun.
Coffman told her to get down.

“I didn’t know what to do and I just followed him. I dropped down and I hid with him,” she said, until he got her to run when the shooter moved away from them. She fled out the front door, but her friend died inside.

Taylor Von Molt, 21, said she was dancing when she “heard what I thought was a balloon pop.”

“I heard it a couple more times, and I turned around and I saw him (the gunman),” she said. “He had … what looked like a bandanna on the bottom on his face, sunglasses, black hoodie, dark jeans.”

The gunman came out of nowhere and just started shooting
About 21 others were injured, many trying to escape, the sheriff’s office said.

Six off-duty law enforcement officers were in the bar when the shooting happened, Dean said. Officials said they were unharmed.

A woman whose daughter was at the bar said one of those officers “stood in front of her daughter, protecting her life with his own,” Ventura County sheriff’s Senior Deputy Julie Novak told CNN affiliate KCAL/KCBS.

Whittler told KABC that several men were in position to block the shooter “ready to take a bullet for every single one of us.”

Witnesses described a man clothed in black and wearing glasses as he walked onto the dance floor filled with people and began shooting.

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Source: Thousand Oaks shooting: Patrons scrambled for safety as man gunned down 12