When a masked gunman entered country line dance Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks, California, on Wednesday and started firing rounds, 22-year-old Marine Brendan Kelly knew from the first few pops what was going on.
“Being in the military, being in the Marine Corps, I’m aware of what that sounds like, especially in an enclosed area,” Kelly told ABC 7.
Kelly had been in a similarly tragic situation before: He was a 2017 concertgoer at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas during the largest mass shooting in U.S. history. On Oct. 1, 2017, a gunman had opened fire on the Vegas strip concert, killing 58 people and injuring nearly 500.