A Survivor Of The Vegas Music Festival Massacre Was Killed At The Borderline Shooting

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Almost exactly a year after the Route 91 country music festival mass shooting in Las Vegas that resulted in over 50 deaths, twelve people were killed when a masked gunman opened fire at Borderline Bar & Grill, a popular college student hangout in Thousand Oaks, California that was hosting its weekly 18-and-over College Country Night. Aside from the country music themes, another thing both incidents had in common was Telemachus Orfanos, who was present at both events. While he survived the Route 91 massacre, he died at the Borderline shooting.

His mother, Susan Orfanos, spoke about the tragedy to The New York Times, and she told the publication, “He was killed last night at Borderline. He made it through Las Vegas, he came home. And he didn’t come home last night, and the two words I want you to write are: ‘gun control.’ Right now, so that no one else goes through this. Can you do that? Can you do that for me? ‘Gun control.'”

It is believed that the gunman was David Ian Long, a 28-year-old military veteran. In a press briefing, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said the motive for the shooting isn’t yet clear, and that the site of the shooting was bloody, saying, “It’s a horrific scene in there, there is blood everywhere and the suspect is part of that, and I didn’t want to get that close and disturb the scene and possibly disturb the investigation. […] Right now as far as we know, there was only one handgun, but that could certainly change as we do a more thorough search of the building.”

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