Alwaght- At least 12 people have been killed after a US Marine Corps veteran opened fire on a bar packed with college students in a suburb of Los Angeles late on Wednesday night.
Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean named the suspect as Ian Long, aged 28. He told a news conference Long had likely shot himself and that he was a veteran who had served in the U.S. Marine Corps.
Geoff Dean said that 10 other people were wounded following the incident at Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, about 50km west of Los Angeles. He said he appeared to have shot at random inside the club, using only a Glock .45-caliber handgun. There was no known motive, he said.
It was the third mass shooting in the United States in two weeks, six days after the death of two women at a yoga class in Tallahassee, Florida and 12 days after a gunman killed 11 worshippers at a synagogue in Pittsburgh, shouting “All Jews must die”.
“It’s a horrific scene in there,” Dean said earlier. “There is blood everywhere and the suspect is part of that.”
The string of shootings has reignited the debate over gun control, with young people taking the lead. Earlier this year, hundreds of students, teachers and their supporters marched in large cities in the US against gun violence and called on politicians to take more action on gun control.