Gunfire, smoke and death: Five years later, Borderline survivors work at moving forward
Bartender Bobby Langin poured his friend a Jack and Coke just as the gunfire erupted.
Langin, who worked at the Borderline Bar & Grill for a decade, served up drinks in the corner of the bar closest to the door. He thinks he probably saw the Thousand Oaks club's greeter Kristina Morisette fall after being shot by a man dressed in black and wielding a .45 caliber Glock. His brain blocks out the memory in an act of self-preservation.
Langin yelled at his friend to hit the floor, dove down himself and crawled into the room used to store kegs, bottles and other supplies. He scrambled up a ladder into an attic with a half-dozen others.
There, he waited at the entrance in terror, listening to the shots, clutching the only “weapon” he could find — a small empty paint can. He thought maybe he could crash it into the shooter's skull if he came up the ladder.
It was 11:20 p.m. on Nov. 7, 2018. The gunman, carrying 190 rounds of ammunition and 10 smoke grenades, killed indiscriminately, firing at the people who came to the bar’s weekly College Night to line dance, enjoy beverages and hang out with friends. Ventura County Sheriff’s Sgt. Ron Helus died too after being struck by rounds fired by the gunman and a California Highway Patrol officer who like Helus was trying to stop the massacre.
The killer shot himself in the head 20 minutes after he entered the bar. He died.
About 260 people went to the Borderline that night. Twelve died not including the gunman. Loved ones, friends and others will honor them at 3 p.m. Tuesday, five years to the day after it happened, in a Thousand Oaks healing garden dedicated to the tragedy.
People who survived the night will forever link the gunfire and the hiss of smoke bombs to lost friends, unimaginable fear and lives catapulted into new directions. Several of them talked to The Star about guilt at living, altered priorities, new jobs and bucket list achievements — all driven by what happened that night.
“It’s part of what has shaped me,” Langin said.
Getting back on the bike
The Borderline closed after the shooting. When owners opened a saloon in Agoura Hills, Langin went back behind the bar. He saw it as a way to leave the business on his own terms. The stint didn’t last long. It never felt natural. Thoughts that the shooting could happen again never completely left.
Langin quit. He focused on his day job of selling insurance full time but sought more purpose in his life, or what he calls "living with intent."
He met Lindsey Grives who became his wife. Langin raced on mountain bikes and motorcycles most of his life but walked away from the sport years earlier because of time. After the shooting, he started cycling again. It made him feel whole. Lindsey reinforced what he already knew.
“She said you’re a better person when you ride a bike,” said Langin, now 39 and living in a Thousand Oaks house the couple bought two years ago.
He started his own business, the Langtown Racing Academy, teaching others how to ride. Like many of the survivors, he said his life is focused on helping others in a list that begins with his kids, Levi who is 8 and Finnley, almost 2.
When the Santa Ana winds kick in and the shooting’s November anniversary approaches, Langin grows more somber. He works at not letting memories suck him into fear and anxiety.
He’s not sure what he’ll do on Tuesday's anniversary, maybe just hug his kids a little tighter.
"I don't lean too heavily on revisiting the past unless I absolutely need to," he said. "I'm not going to say my way is best. It's just my way."
Survivor's guilt
Molly Maurer thinks about forgetting to charge her phone.
She went to the Borderline on a Wednesday night five years ago like she always did, to line dance and meet up with friends Emily Marostica, Kayla Ritchie and others. They sat out a dance because they didn’t know a song. They sipped drinks at their table toward the back of the bar.
When the thunder exploded, first at the door, later at the dance floor, Maurer knew what it was instantly. She had heard the same blasts in Las Vegas a year earlier at the Route 91 Harvest Festival in Vegas when a gunman killed 60 people and wounded hundreds others. Marostica and Ritchie, also in Vegas that night, knew too.
Together, they sprinted for an exit door already propped open. The gunshots continued. They ran through the parking lot and up Rolling Oaks Drive, finally ducking for cover behind an electrical utilities box.
Maurer, desperate to get home to her 8-month-old daughter, grabbed her phone to call her mother in Simi Valley. It was mired in red, only 7% of the power left. She didn't plug it in before going to the Borderline.
Already overwhelming fears multiplied. The phone would never last. She wouldn’t be able to tell others what happened. Family and friends would think she was dead on the dance floor.
“I was terrified,” she said.
Somehow, the phone kept working. Maurer made it to her home and her daughter in Oak Park. But the fear and anxiety never really lifted. The day after the shooting, her family was evacuated in the Woolsey Fire.
She felt paralyzed by trauma, flashbacks and the always gnawing fear it would happen again.
Months after the shooting, she went to a support group being started by the nonprofit counseling group, Give an Hour. She told her story in sobs. Other survivors cried with her, nodding as they listened. She realized they felt the same things.
“It was like the most healing thing I’ve ever done,” she said.
Maurer had been selling ink and toner to companies over the telephone. She quit and joined Give an Hour. Now, she coordinates the peer counseling programing, training survivors of trauma to help others who feel trapped and isolated.
It feels like she’s giving back.
A year after Borderline, Maurer, Marostica and Ritchie inscribed their thoughts onto three of the nearly 250 concrete pavers placed in the healing garden to represent survivors of the shooting. On her block, Maurer apologized to the victims for surviving. It’s part of coping with the "why not me" thoughts that surfaced as she pored over every moment of the shooting.
“I don’t think I’ll ever eliminate survivors guilt, but I’ve learned to live with it,” she said.
On Saturday, she line-danced with other survivors. On Tuesday, she’ll go to the healing gardens to mark a five-year anniversary that to outsiders may seem like a long time.
“Some days, it seems like it was a week ago,” she said.
Recovery and change
Blood splattered on his shirt as if it had been flung from a paint brush. Collin Hymes saw it as he wobbled in the Borderline’s parking lot moments after jumped out a window.
A bullet fired by the gunman broke after it hit the bar. A piece of the bullet, the size of a chocolate chip, lodged in Hymes' neck.
He was in bad shape. His knee felt like it was dangling from his leg. The jump destroyed ligaments and cartilage. Other people who had escaped the shooting carried him out of the parking lot to safety.
He underwent two surgeries, the first to remove the bullet fragment, the other to fix his knee with titanium pins and an anterior cruciate ligament from a cadaver, He was 33 then, a former Marine who made his living as a television stuntman.
The shooting brought introspection and change.
“It was a reminder I don’t have to be stuck in one spot,” he said. “I could be whatever I wanted to be.”
He wants to be a stunt coordinator and a director. Two years ago, he landed a breakthrough role playing a Gamorrean guard in the Star Wars-inspired live action series, "The Book of Boba Fett." He thinks the visibility he gained could push him closer to his goals.
Now, he’s part of the Screen Actors Guild strike and is pursuing more adventure. Last week, he talked to The Star in a WhatsApp phone call from the edge of the North Pole in Svalbard, a Norwegian archipelago and one of the northernmost inhabited places in the world. He was there exploring ice caves and dog-sledding.
He called it a bucket-list trip inspired largely by Borderline.
“I realize I could have died that night,” he said. “I don’t want to live my life without doing the things I want to do.”
Hymes pushes others who were there that night too. Dylan Short, a butcher from Simi Valley, has found empowerment in freestyle motorcycling, weight loss and pursuit of a healthier lifestyle. When he felt trapped and depressed, he reached out to Hymes.
"Collin said to me, 'That’s all bull----. You can do anything you want,'" Short said. "If you sit on your a-- in that state of mind, you won't get where you want to be."
What if it never happened?
Emily Marostica was with Maurer and Kayla Ritchie at the back of the bar. She was eating fried cheese curds, and because she was only 20, sipping on water.
The guns blasted. The women looked at each other in horror. They yelled out, “Run.”
The thought that lurks in the back of Marostica’s mind when she's choosing a table at restaurants or shopping for groceries is that they were sitting near the exit. It’s why she’s always looking for the lighted signs that show the way out.
She still goes to concerts, still line dances. She plans first.
"I always know where my exits are," she said. "I always know how to get out of a situation."
The tragedy brought rediscovery. Family has always been important to her. The shooting magnified the connection. She pushed law school plans two years down the road to be at home.
"I needed that extra time to be with my family and to spend with my friends and to experience life right now,” she said.
Marostica, 25, of Ventura, thinks about the people who aren't here. She thinks about a reality where it never happened, wondering how her path would have changed.
The walkthroughs through the events of that night still happen. They aren't as triggering as they once were. But Tuesday's anniversary feels different because it's a milestone. Five years. The thoughts come more often. They weigh heavier.
"This one feels harder," she said.
Remembering Borderline's victims
Sean Adler
Blake Dingman
Jake Dunham
Cody Gifford-Coffman
Sgt. Ron Helus
Alaina Housley
Daniel Manrique
Justin Meek
Mark Meza
Kristina Morisette
Telemachus Orfanos
Noel Sparks
Tom Kisken covers health care and other news for the Ventura County Star. Reach him at tom.kisken@vcstar.com or 805-437-0255.
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This article originally appeared on Ventura County Star: 5 years after the shooting, Borderline survivors work to move forward
