Two months ago, Tyler Odekirk started working as a security guard at the Borderline Bar & Grill. Soon, the 21-year old felt like he knew “everybody” at the bar.
That made the mass shooting there Wednesday night even harder to take as he struggled to reach friends.
“I can’t get anything to anybody that’s in there,” he said as he stood in the darkness with dozens of people on a sidewalk amid flashing police lights.
“I had a friend call me in a panic thinking that I was there,” Odekirk added. “I was home.”
Wednesday nights were college nights at the bar, he said. As many as 600 might come and go throughout the night. At any point there might be as many as 200 people inside the Borderline Bar & Grill, Odekirk said.
“It’s a country night,” he said.
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He saw some people coming out of the bar. “They were on their way to the hospital and they were hysterical,” Odekirk said.
He said many of the regulars who come on such nights are survivors of the Las Vegas mass shooting at a country festival last year that left 58 people dead and hundreds injured.
“A lot of people that come here are Route 91 survivors, so if this happened to these people again —” he said, trailing off and taking a drag from a cigarette.
Odekirk said he panicked when he heard about the shooting. Then he got to the bar as fast as he could. And waited.
Odekirk’s cousin, also a security guard at the bar, also waited to hear from friends.
“Some are still hiding in the attic,” Zac Frye, 27, said before 2 a.m. “We heard one of our guards got shot and he’s in the hospital.”
Frye estimates that about 20 of his friends were at the bar late Wednesday.
“We’re all close friends there,” said the Ventura resident.
By sheer luck he was not at the bar when the shooting happened. He had planned to go, Frye said, to pick up his paycheck. Then he fell asleep.
“I’m just hoping everyone’s OK,” he said. “I was at the Vegas shooting. A lot of people there were.”
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People comfort each other after a mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks on Nov. 7, 2018. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
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People comfort each other after a mass shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill. (Wally Skalij / Los Angeles Times)
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Molly Esterline and David Crawford comfort each other after the shooting. ( Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Survivors and bystanders outside the Borderline Bar & Grill. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Sheriffs deputies investigate the shooting at the Borderline Bar & Grill. (Patrick T. Fallon / For The Times)
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People stand in a parking lot along South Moorpark Road in the aftermath of the shooting. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
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A crowd including survivors gathers at a street corner near the Borderline Bar & Grill. (Calvin Alagot / Los Angeles Times)
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Firefighters search the scene near the Borderline Bar & Grill the morning after the shooting. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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People huddle together in a parking lot along South Moorpark Road in the aftermath of a mass shooting. (Kent Nishimura / Los Angeles Times)
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Survivors embrace in the aftermath of the shooting. (Michael Owen Baker / For the Times)
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Chyann Worrell, left, Nellie Wong and Erika Sigman were inside the Borderline Bar & Grill when the shooting started. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times )
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Sheriffs interview witnesses at the Borderline Bar & Grill. ( Calvin Alagot / Los Angeles Times)
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Holden Harrah, 21, right, who witnessed the shooting, hugs family and friends ( Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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People hug on the side of the road from the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks. (Mike Baker / For the Times )
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Ventura County sheriff’s Sgt. Eric Buschow and Sgt. Julie Novak embrace outside the Borderline Bar & Grill after a gunman fatally shot 12 people, including a fellow deputy. ( Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Tim Dominguez, who was in the bar with his son during the shooting, grieves alone. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Officers inspect the Borderline Bar & Grill after the shooting. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Witnesses console one another across the street from the Borderline Bar & Grill and talk to law enforcement. (Sean Greene / Los Angeles Times )
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A couple walk up Rolling Oaks Drive following the shooting. (Michael Owen Baker / For the Times)
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Survivors leave the scene the morning after the shooting. ( Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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People hug following the shooting. (Michael Owen Baker / For the Times)
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Sarah Rose DeSon talks to friends after witnessing the shooting. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times )
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A police officer surveys the area around Borderline Bar & Grill. ( Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
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Ventura County sheriff’s cadets and Oxnard College Fire Academy cadets salute as the procession carrying the body of Sgt. Ron Helus heads to the medical examiner’s office in Ventura. (Michael Owen Baker / For The Times)
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Members of the Ventura County Sheriff’s Dept. salute as a hearse carrying the body of Sgt. Ron Helus arrives at the coroner’s office in Ventura.
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Comdr. Christopher Dunn escorts relatives of Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus as officers salute them near the entrance to the coroner’s office. (Mel Melcon / Los Angeles Times)
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Tiffany Azpeitia, 26, left, and Jamie Eads, 23, both of Thousand Oaks, line up to donate blood for victims of the Borderline Bar and Grill mass shooting. “It is hard, everyone is like family there,” said Eads.
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p>Los Robles Regional Medical Center staff stand in respect as the hearse carrying Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus leaves the hospital. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Hundreds line up at La Reina High School in Thousand Oaks to donate blood for victims of the Borderline Bar and Grill mass shooting.
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A hearse carrying the casket of Sgt. Ron Helus heads north on the 101 Freeway past the Borchard Road overpass toward the medical examiner’s office in Ventura.
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From left, Alexis Tait, 23, Rachel Berg, 20, and Harrison King, 24, weep as the hearse carrying Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus leaves Los Robles Regional Medical Center for the medical examiner’s office in Ventura. The three were inside the bar when the shooting took place. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)
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Crowds watch the procession carrying the flag-draped casket of Sgt. Ron Helus to the medical examiner’s office in Ventura. (Al Seib / Los Angeles Times)
Frye said the Las Vegas shooting was traumatizing.
“I was terrified something like this would happen ever since,” he said. “I always go to work with a gun in my car. … And I wasn’t there tonight. You’re always paranoid after something like that happens to you.”
Ryan Sehler, 20, also waited to hear from friends who had attended college night. He said he and his friends hang out at the Borderline regularly.
Sehler, who lives in Simi Valley, said students from Oxnard, Ventura and the San Fernando Valley frequent the bar.
“A lot of people bring their out of state friends or their out of country friends,” he said.
“It’s a small place and it’s usually completely filled,” the Moorpark College student said of the bar. “On a typical day, it’s all these college students are there and we have a good time. We dance with the music, you know. They even teach line dances. It’s a good time.”
Of the six or so friends who went to the bar, Sehler said he had only heard news about one person — an acquaintance whose mother he ran into on the street. The woman told him that her daughter had fled the bar and run into a stranger’s house nearby for shelter.
Sehler said that he’s been calling people who might have gone to the bar last night to make sure they were safe as well. The people he was able to get in contact with were all home.
“The main group I hang out with, that’s the ones I haven’t heard of yet,” he said. “Where are my friends at?”
sarah.parvini@latimes.com
Twitter: @sarahparvini
