THOUSAND OAKS, Calif. (AP) — The gunman who killed 12 people at a country music bar in a Los Angeles suburb was a former military machine gunner who was interviewed by mental health specialists months ago after a neighbor reported a disturbance.
Ian David Long, 28, apparently killed himself after the Wednesday attack. He had joined the Marines and gotten married young. Within several years, he left the military and divorced, later enrolling in a university and most recently living with his mother.
Long’s service began when he was 18 and lasted nearly five years, including a seven-month tour in Afghanistan, according to the Pentagon. He was honorably discharged with the rank of corporal in 2013.
In April, a neighbor called authorities to report loud noises coming from the house that Long shared with his mother in a Thousand Oaks neighborhood of well-manicured lawns and homes.
Deputies found Long “was somewhat irate, acting a little irrationally” and called in a mental health specialist, Ventura County Sheriff Geoff Dean said. That specialist assessed Long but concluded he couldn’t be involuntarily committed for psychiatric observation.
“The mental health experts out there cleared him that day,” Dean told reporters Thursday, less than 12 hours after the Wednesday night massacre.
They also were concerned that Long might be suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, Dean said, “basing that (on) the fact that he was a veteran and had been in the Corps.”
Long’s only other contact with authorities came after a traffic collision and after he alleged he was the victim of a violent encounter in 2015 at another bar in Thousand Oaks, Dean said.
A next-door neighbor said he called authorities about six months ago when he heard loud banging and shouting come from Long’s ranch-style home.
“I got concerned, so I called the sheriffs,” neighbor Tom Hanson said outside his home Thursday as federal and local law enforcement officers searched Long’s house, where an American flag flew over the garage. “I was concerned because I knew he had been in the military.”
Hanson described Long as an introvert who never caused him problems and said he was “dumbfounded” by the massacre.
Authorities haven’t identified what motivated Long to open fire during college night at Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, a city of about 130,000 people around 40 miles (64 kilometers) from downtown Los Angeles.
The dead included 11 people inside the bar and a veteran sheriff’s sergeant who was the first officer through the door. Hundreds fled in terror before Long apparently killed himself.
“Obviously he had something going on in his head that would cause him to do something like this,” Dean said.
The Marine Corps said Long earned several awards, including a Combat Action Ribbon and a Marine Corps Good Conduct Medal. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 3rd Marine Regiment, Third Marine Division in Kaneohe Bay, Hawaii.
Long’s mother, Colleen, posted Facebook photos of her son in his military uniform in 2010 and 2011.
“My Son is home, well sort of, back in Hawaii, soon to be in Cali come January, hooray!” she wrote on Dec. 14, 2012.
Another photo from 2014 shows Ian Long with his arm draped around his mother in front of Dodger Stadium. The two were wearing Dodgers T-shirts and smiles.
Court records show Long was married as a 19-year-old in Honolulu in June 2009, and he and his wife separated in June 2011 while he was deployed to Afghanistan. The couple cited irreconcilable differences in divorce papers filed in May 2013, two months after Long left the Marines. Their marriage officially ended that November.
California State University, Northridge, said in a statement that Long was a student, last attending in 2016, but offered no further details.
Your title is odd. “Military Machine Gunner”. He was in the infantry so of course he would man some form of weapon system.
I’m sure gun fetishists will be quick to vilify the mental health professionals who cleared him in April. But mental health professionals are constrained by the law, which says that if a person is not an imminent threat to himself or others, that person may not be held against his will. And it is quite probably that in April he wasn’t an imminent threat to himself or others. In any case, mental health professionals are not clairvoyant, and cannot predict the course a person’s mental disturbance might take.
If anything, this highlights the problem of believing that we can meaningfully address gun violence by improving access to mental healthcare. Don’t get me wrong: there are ample reasons to improve access to mental health care, and we should certainly do that. But we kid ourselves if we think that will make even a dent in the problem of mass shooters.
He wasn’t “cleared”—who uses language like that? He simply was not deemed eligible for involuntary commitment which is a relatively high bar. If you’re going to cover shootings, you need to learn what psychiatric jargon and policy mean. In addition, it helps to know what prompted a psychiatric referral–usually it isn’t some one being a little angry or “a little irrational”.
That aside, was he a Republican (I’m guessing yes)? Did he participate on far Right internet discussion spaces (not unlikely, esp. with ex-military)? Was he ever affiliated with militia or far Right groups? Did he do drugs–meth makes some people act much like schizophrenics. If he had serious mental illness, it probably would have been manifest some time ago and gotten him kicked out of the military, whereas PTSD is a possibility although it usually takes drug use to for someone with PTSD to do something like this?
Let’s ask some better questions. After all the shootings this year, journalists need to learn a few things to better inform us.
The Ammo-sexuals (or Gundementalist if your a believer) in the NRA (No Regulations Allowed) and their lackys in Congress have made it perfectly clear: Any regulation that keeps any American from unlimited ownership of firearms will be opposed, to include:
People on the Terrorist Watch List.
People with mental health issues.
People with a criminal record.
Children.
As the Master Cartoonist Tom Tomorrow illustrated most clearly, this is the reality of 2018.
I’m so happy that people with obvious mental problems are able to purchase weapons and ammunition. What could possibly go wrong? Once again, the NRA has blood on their hands. Traitors.