'I don't want prayers ... I want gun control,' demands mom of Thousand Oaks mass shooting victim

Telemachus Orfanos, 27, survived the Vegas shooting but died in Thousand Oaks.

November 9, 2018, 10:30 AM

Telemachus Orfanos survived the deadliest shooting in modern American history. But he was killed one year later in another mass shooting in his hometown of Thousand Oaks, California.

"My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends and he came home. He didn't come home last night," his mother, Susan Orfanos, told ABC Los Angeles station KABC-TV on Thursday.

Susan Orfanos' son, Telemachus Orfanos , died in the shooting at a Thousand Oaks bar on Nov. 7, 2018.
WABC

In an emotional interview with KABC, she desperately urged for gun control.

"I don't want prayers. I don't want thoughts," she pleaded emphatically. "I want gun control. And I hope to God nobody sends me anymore prayers. I want gun control. No more guns."

PHOTO: A woman who fled the Borderline Bar and Grill is hugged by relatives in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Nov. 8,  2018.
A woman who fled the Borderline Bar and Grill is hugged by relatives in Thousand Oaks, Calif. Nov. 8, 2018.
Mike Nelson/EPA via Shutterstock

Telemachus Orfanos, 27, a Navy veteran, survived the October 2017 mass shooting at a country music concert in Las Vegas that killed 58 people.

    He helped pull mangled victims away from the gunfire and suffered PTSD from the experience, his father, Marc Orfanos, told The Washington Post.

    He "easily saved hundreds of lives,” Brendan Hoolihan, a fellow Las Vegas concertgoer, told The Post.

    The two didn't know each other until the Route 91 concert shooting broke out. But after spending that night helping victims, they forged a close bond over the past year.

    People run from the Route 91 Harvest country music festival after gun fire was heard, Oct. 1, 2017 in Las Vegas.
    David Becker/Getty Images, FILE

    One year later, Telemachus Orfanos was shot and killed when a gunman burst into the Borderline Bar & Grill in Thousand Oaks Wednesday night.

    Telemachus Orfanos was among the 12 people slain.

    Family members are led into the Thousand Oaks Teen Center where families have gathered after a deadly shooting at a bar in Thousand Oaks, Calif., Nov. 8, 2018.
    Richard Vogel/AP
    People comfort each other as they sit near the scene, Nov. 8, 2018, in Thousand Oaks, Calif. where a gunman opened fire Wednesday inside a country dance bar crowded with hundreds of people on "college night."
    Mark J. Terrill/AP

    Las Vegas massacre survivors from the area would convene at the country-themed Borderline Bar. For many it provided a sense of community.

    "Borderline was our safe space," Brendan Kelly, who survived both the Las Vegas and Thousand Oak shootings, told KABC.

    He called it "our home for the probably 30 or 45 of us who are all from the greater Ventura County area who were in Vegas."

    They would sometimes go to Borderline "three nights in a row just so we could be with each other," he told KABC.