Video shows shots ring out in California bar before patron runs to safety

Video from inside the Borderline Bar & Grill shows the panic and confusion during a shooting that killed 12 people and injured a dozen others.

Multiple gunshots are heard in the video, which was posted by Dallas Knapp, along with the sound of breaking glass. Witnesses said bar patrons used chairs and bar stools to smash windows in an attempt to help people escape the bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif., on Wednesday night.

1:53 California bar shooting: Man saves dozens by throwing a bar stool through window

At one point in the video, the silhouette of a man can be seen, who Knapp identifies as the gunman.

“The guy you see is the murderer and the shots are him shooting people trying to get out the windows,” Knapp wrote on Instagram.

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Officials from the Ventura County sheriff’s department identified 28-year-old Ian David Long as the shooter and said he likely died by suicide. Witnesses described him as wearing all black.

Long was a former U.S. marine and neighbours said he was possibly suffering from PTSD. No motive has been given for the shooting.

0:56 California bar shooting: Ian David Long identified as gunman who killed 12

The video follows Knapp as he runs from the bar, calling to people to get away from the area.

“Guy, run! He’s coming out this door,” Knapp can be heard saying.

Witnesses said patrons were in a panic as they tried to escape or hide from the shooter.

“It was a huge panic, everyone got up, I was trampled, I was kind of left on the floor until some guy came behind me and grabbed me and dragged me out,” Teylor Whittler told KABC-TV.

Hundreds of people gathered Thursday evening to remember the dozen people shot and killed at the packed Borderline Bar & Grill the night before.

The dead included a sheriff’s deputy who tried to enter the bar to help and a man who had survived last year’s massacre in Las Vegas, Telemachus Orfanos, 27.

“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts,” his mother, Susan Schmidt-Orfanos, said Thursday. “I want those bastards in Congress — they need to pass gun control so no one else has a child that doesn’t come home.”

0:37 California bar shooting: Victim’s mother says she doesn’t want prayers, she wants ‘no more guns’

The city of about 130,000 people about 64 kilometres from Los Angeles, just across the county line, is annually listed as one of the safest cities in America.

— With files from the Associated Press