He Escaped A Mass Shooting

00:00:10
Speaker 1: This is Our American Stories, and every once in a while, we just tell great stories about ordinary Americans doing extraordinary things. A mass shooting took place on November seventh, twenty eighteen, in Thousand Oaks, California, at the Borderline Bar in Grille, the country western bar frequented by college students. Thirteen people were killed. Tyler Spady was one of the roughly two hundred and fifty patrons there on that faithful night. Here he is to share his story of survival and.

00:00:44
Speaker 2: Hope. The week before the shooting.

00:00:50
Speaker 3: It just gives kind of a story to what Borderline was. It was a Halloween night where everyone goes and dresses up and you have costume contents. And that night, I went as the little Boy and Up in the full Boy Scout uniform that I borrowed from my neighbor, and my buddy Jesse went is Donald Trump.

00:01:13
Speaker 2: And the whole place was full of people.

00:01:16
Speaker 3: In costumes, and my dad was in attendance, and my sister was in attendance, and everyone was hanging out, playing, playing pool, creating friendships, line dancing, and having a good time like you usually do at this place. And it wasn’t just a bar. Many people, when you think about it in the news, just think about it like that.

00:01:44
Speaker 2: In the college years.

00:01:46
Speaker 3: It was a really amazing place where I had been going since I was eighteen years old, so five years prior to this happening, and I knew just about every person who regularly went, and especially my friend group of about twenty people that would go regularly and play pool and do the things that college students do. But saying that this even happened in this place, you know, Venture County is one of the safest counties in the country according to the FBI; and my dad, knowing these things, this was a safe place where he could trust his daughter and his son to go when we were eighteen, and it was clean, safe, fun, where you’re never gonna get in a bad situation.

00:02:36
Speaker 2: And I mean, he had prepared us for something like this.

00:02:39
Speaker 3: We all had bulletproof plates that he had bought us from a place called Defender Body Armor in Camarillo. So going into that night, it was like any other night. We, me and my buddy John, were moving to Texas to become a firefighter, so he had come over to the house, and we were going to go out and see him off. And my sister, who was in Montana a few days prior, on her way home from the airport, was in a car accident, so she wasn’t able to attend. But it was an off night because the previous week was Halloween, so people were kind of burnt out from it, and they didn’t want to go, so we weren’t able to get any any of the people that usually come. I am thankful to God every day that actually wasn’t able to come, because I don’t know what the outcome would have been having my sister there, if I would have made it, or if she would have. So I’m very thankful that that happened, and it kind of gives perspective on this whole thing that every single thing in your life happens for a reason, and it’s a good life outcome that I’ve taken from it. So we got there and saw my friends that I’d grown up with my whole life in it out front. So we kind of joined groups and went into the other a group of about fifteen people and started the night, and it was a good night like any other. We got there about ten fifteen and started hanging out with everyone and taking pictures and dancing, line dancing, and socializing and creating friendships. And then about eleven twenty, my ex-girlfriend, who I hadn’t talked to in a couple of months, asked me if I wanted to swing dance. So I went out and did a couple of swing dances and went to the side and just kind of looked across the dance floor, and it was a feeling like this was the best life could get for a young kid. And then I texted my friends and they said that they were near the bar, so I took a few steps toward the bar and then I heard the first shots.

00:05:00
Speaker 2: Immediately knew what it was.

00:05:01
Speaker 3: I knew it was a gun, but it was like you’re in a gun range without any ear protection on, with it reverberating through the room, and I thought it may have been a dispute between two people. And I turned to my left, and there was a guy all in black, and he had just shot someone in the front and then started shooting toward the bar where my friends were. And I didn’t really feel any emotions. I just was in shock that this was happening, and it wasn’t — you could tell it wasn’t — a planned thing where he was coming in to kill someone. He was coming in to kill as many people as he could. Then he turned the gun toward the area I was in and started shooting, and I immediately dropped to the floor and went toward the wall near the dance floor or it is, out of vision of the front upper level, and placed my back against that. And then I remember not feeling safe there because if he went down, you could see me. So I jumped over the wall onto a few tables and went under the tables onto push some chairs out of the way, some bar stools, and then there was a…

00:06:26
Speaker 2: Pause.

00:06:26
Speaker 3: It felt like, it felt like I was in there for twenty minutes, and in actuality, I was probably in there for two minutes or so. And he when knows this pause, someone said run, and it’s, it was like immediately every single person in the bar, who didn’t know what to do based on those words, started moving. So I got up and started moving toward the direction everyone was running in.

00:06:53
Speaker 1: And you’ve been listening to Tyler Spady tell the story of what happened in a country-western bar not far from his home in Thousand Oaks, California, and at a Borderline Bar and Grill. And we all saw the story in the news, and we’ve seen stories in the news like this before. And when we come back, we’re gonna hear more from Tyler Spady and what happened on that night and beyond. This is Our American Stories, folks. If you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of seventeen dollars and seventy-six cents is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com. And we returned to Our American Stories. In Tyler Spady’s story, we’re talking about the mass shooting that occurred in Thousand Oaks, California, at the Borderline Bar and Grill, where thirteen people were killed in an instant, practically, and Tyler was there. There was a pause and gunfire, so someone in the Borderline Bar and Grill yelled, “Run!” as Tyler recalled. With those words, everyone started moving, and that included Tyler himself. Here again, it’s Tyler Spady.

00:08:41
Speaker 2: Everyone was running toward the kitchen.

00:08:44
Speaker 3: I didn’t know whether it was behind me or not, so I looked over my shoulder, and when I turned around, someone had put down the waiter door, and I hit my face into that and fell under it, and started crawling. And everyone was shoving and pushing, trying to get through the small door, trampling over each other. And people are basically swimming over each other, and it was a really claustrophobic moment of terror. And you could hear the bullets whizzing over and hitting the walls as we were moving out. And I got up and started running, running through the kitchen in a haze. I got to the back of the bar where there’s a loading dock and jumped off that and fell over onto the ground and then recovered from that. And there’s a group of about forty of the people that were with me running to the hill nearby. I started running up to that, but I didn’t feel safe in that moment, so I told everyone on the hill to run to the neighborhood nearby, and a girl came with me, and I helped her over the fence, and we went to every door in the neighborhood nearby and started knocking on the doors, trying to get into houses. Eventually, we’re able to get inside, and when I finally did get inside, it was no longer the fight-or-flight where I was just trying to live.

00:10:17
Speaker 2: I was able to feel safe.

00:10:18
Speaker 3: So I just laid against the wall and started crying, and received calls and called my family to tell them that I was okay, and…

00:10:30
Speaker 2: It was.

00:10:31
Speaker 3: It’s interesting, looking back, I can feel how I felt that night. I don’t dwell on it that often or think about it is I don’t think it’s beneficial for me to do so, and I’ve kind of moved past it, but I can definitely feel those emotions, and the family albe forever grateful for them letting me into that home, because they were really kind to me and embraced me and really helped me. After this, my friend John called me and said he was all right, and they had jumped out the window, and he had a similar situation of swimming over people. And so I got in the car. His mom came and picked me up, and I’d known this guy since middle school, and I was just glad.

00:11:19
Speaker 2: That he was okay.

00:11:21
Speaker 3: And we drove home and it was a quiet but really sad ride home where you’re just trying to take in what you just witnessed. When I did finally get home, I can remember the best feeling that I’ve ever had in my life was hugging my mom and my sisters, and falling to my knees upstairs and just letting every single emotion I had out and for about ten minutes laying on the ground.

00:11:50
Speaker 2: After this, we…

00:11:52
Speaker 3: Turned on the news and it further became real. We were all in shock — everyone in the room. My neighbors of fifteen years came came over to the house and embraced me, and they were also regulars at this place. When I got home, my mom said that I had blood splattered on my face, but I didn’t have any cuts, so I went and…

00:12:21
Speaker 2: Cried. Well, I washed myself off.

00:12:23
Speaker 3: And went back to the room to see everyone, and…

00:12:28
Speaker 2: I can’t, I can’t express the feelings that I had.

00:12:31
Speaker 3: And it was just other than disbelief and terror — but a terror in a sense that you can’t get a thought together. There is nothing but the absence of feeling. One of my friends actually that night, who had, we had seen there, was not allowed in because of some reasons, and so him and his girlfriend had gone home. And that’s just another thing, another moment of God, I think, interjecting into this, and…

00:13:08
Speaker 2: Everything happens for reasons.

00:13:10
Speaker 3: So those people were spared the trauma as well, and potentially more than that. In the days following, you slowly get information about friends and people you know who have been were killed in this event. And me and my sister, my sister was best friends with one of the people — one of their sisters — that had passed, and when we got that news, we just both weeped in her room. That was a terrible moment for me and her. But this family that formed out of that and was there before will always have a special place in my heart and are considered family to me. I will never lose the connections that I’ve made that night from all these these individuals. A few days later, after the event, when we were doing different events with everyone and coming together to feel this as a group, Donald Trump flew into the town and visited with a few of the families who had lost certain individuals and showed nothing but love and admiration for everyone involved.

00:14:38
Speaker 2: That was a really…

00:14:40
Speaker 3: Incredible experience to meet a president and for him to do that for us. One of the things that I take away from this — I mean, there’s a verse. There’s no greater love than to give your life for a friend. And many individuals that night had done that that act, and I’ll be grateful to those people. After this all happened, it was just months of recovering from the trauma, and I tried to put myself in it as much as possible, to sit on it now and…

00:15:19
Speaker 2: Let it go in my past later.

00:15:21
Speaker 3: So I tried to be around people around me that were also involved in it. And because I was actually going to Montana, so I set this date. It was January eighth that I was going to Montana and Montana, and this happened on November seventh, the day I was going to leave to go to Montana. I went to the to the bar to see it one last time and say goodbye and leave it in the past. So I got on the plane and went to Montana, and I lived in Montana where I was born, and got to move past that moment and change my scenery. Then I came back for the one-year anniversary and felt it again with the individuals that were with me, with all the people there, I was able to heal more but also see the good in every moment. The family that is Borderline that had come together was there to comfort everyone who was still hurting and to move past it as a maybe more than Borderline of a Thousand Oaks family, of Venture County family — all these people that are connected in this close-knit community.

00:16:57
Speaker 1: And what a voice! You’ve been listening to Tyler Spady tell the story of not merely a mass shooting episode that took the lives of thirteen young people, but changed the town he lived in — but not just for the worse. In many ways, as he put it, for the better. Evil can come knocking, and it will. But how a town copes with that, how it comes together and rises above it? It takes the measure of the town. It can do it the same thing it can do to a marriage. Someone loses a kid, and that marriage isn’t strong. Well, it has two ways to go. It gets stronger or it breaks apart. And how we deal with tragedy and trauma, we talk a lot about these things here on the show. The story of Tyler Spady, indeed, the story of a town — Thousand Oaks — a beautiful story in the end, a sad one too. Tyler Spady’s here on Our American Stories.