Back in April, officers in Thousand Oaks, California, responded to a disturbance at the home where Ian David Long lived.
Long,
a 28-year-old who served in Afghanistan with the Marines, was acting
somewhat irate and a little irrationally, according to Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean.
A
mental health specialist with the crisis team met with him and felt he
might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. But after
speaking with him, they decided not to detain him under laws that allow
for the temporary detention of people with psychiatric issues.
Seven months later, officers swarmed his home again for a very different reason: a mass shooting.
Long was identified by police on Thursday as the gunman who killed 12 people
and injured more than a dozen more in a sudden burst of violence at the
Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks. Authorities have no motive
yet.
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."
Shooter began firing outside
Survivors
of the shooting said the gunman, dressed in black and wearing glasses,
shot a security guard outside and then shot a young woman working at the
counter just inside the door before opening fire on others.
One of the victims, Ventura County Sgt. Ron Helus, was fatally shot when he entered the bar and tried to stop the rampaging gunman, Dean said.
Police found Long dead of what Dean said he believed to be a self-inflicted gunshot.
One
handgun, a legally purchased .45-caliber Glock, was at the scene. The
gunman used an extended magazine in the shooting, Dean said.
He was a frequent visitor to the bar
On Thursday morning, Dean said he did not know of any connection between Long and the Borderline bar.
But Long's friends told CNN he was there frequently.
Police identified Ian David Long as the gunman in the mass shooting.
"We
would go to Borderline together. He really liked it," said one woman
who has been friends with Long for five years and does not want her name
made public.
"I would make fun of
him, because he would drag me there. Sometimes we'd go there to have a
drink, sit and talk, listen to music," she said.
Borderline,
a Western-themed establishment known to regularly host country, salsa
and swing dancing nights, was hosting a college country night on
Wednesday evening.
"There was a
community there. He was a part of that community. The whole bar is line
dancing. People do choreographed dances for hours, cowboy boots and hats
in the middle of the suburbs of Thousand Oaks," the friend said.
A
person who was a friend of Long's until their early 20s and who did not
want their name revealed publicly similarly said they used to go to
Borderline together. The friend expressed shock that Long could be a
killer.
"I don't know what the hell
happened. He was always happy. I never thought this would ever come
from him. We used to go snowboarding all the time. He was a good guy,"
the friend said.
A third friend who
did not want to be publicly identified said Long stopped communicating
two years ago but said the shooting was unlike him.
"He
wasn't unhinged, he wasn't violent. He was a sweet guy who served his
country and was using his GI Bill to go to college and get a degree to
help more people," the friend said. "Out of our group of friends I
thought the highest of him."
Todd Stratton, who knew Long from high school, was at Borderline but didn't get a good enough look to recognize the shooter.
He said Long had anger issues in school but it was nothing that concerned him.
He was in the Marine Corps
The gunman was a corporal in the Marines from August 2008 to March 2013, according to Defense Department records.
He went to Afghanistan from November 2010 to June 2011.
Thomas
Burke, a pastor who served with Long in the same US Marine Corps
regiment, said Long's battalion arrived during intense fighting in
Helmand province.
But Burke warned against too quickly blaming Long's actions on trauma experienced during war.
"PTSD
doesn't create homicidal ideation," Burke said. "We train a generation
to be as violent as possible, then we expect them to come home and be
OK. It's not mental illness. It's that we're doing something to a
generation, and we're not responding to the needs they have."
Long posted information about his military service on a special forces forum called ShadowSpear in March 2017.
Under
the name "doorkicker03," Long said he was an infantry machine gunner
while in the Marine Corps for 4½ years, and was an instructor in Okinawa
in Japan.
Caption
"I
am graduating with a B.S. in Athletic Training in two months," he wrote
in his ShadowSpear post. "I found out a little too late that just
wasn't the job for me. Maybe the ego got the better of me but it took
only one time for a 19-year-old D-2 athlete to talk down to me and tell
me how to do my job that I realized this wasn't the career I wanted to
head."
Long did not complete his
degree. He was a student at California State University, Northridge,
majoring in athletic training from 2013 to 2016, but he did not
graduate, university representative Carmen Ramos Chandler said.
Long also went to the College of the Canyons for two spring semesters, according to that school
He lived with his mother
Sheriff's deputies stand outside Ian David Long's house Thursday in Newbury Park, California.
Paul
Delacourt, assistant director of the FBI's Los Angeles office, said
agents are processing Long's home and vehicle in an effort to identify
his motivation and paint a picture of his frame of mind. There are no
indications Long was working with any associates, he said.
A
neighbor said Long's mother "lived in fear" of what her son might do,
saying when police were called to the house earlier this year "it took
them about a half a day to get him out of the house."
Neighbor
Richard Berge said Long's mother told him she was concerned about her
son, though not worried about her own safety, and that "she was ... kind
of beside herself, she didn't know what to do because he wouldn't get
help."
Berge said when he saw police activity at the house on Thursday morning, "I knew what it was."
