Telemachus ‘Tel’ Orfanos saw too much horror. The 27-year-old Greek-American first survived last year’s massacre at a Las Vegas country music festival, where 58 people were slain. He was also at the Borderline Bar and Grill on Wednesday night, when a gunman, dressed in black, killed 12 people. One of them was Orfanos.
“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 Schmidt-Orfanos, told a local TV reporter.
“And I don’t want prayers, I don’t want thoughts, I want gun control,” Schmidt-Orfanos said, her voice breaking with the rawness of her emotions. “And I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers. I want gun control. No more guns!”
“I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control. No more guns.”
Orfanos, 27, reportedly worked at Borderline as well as at Infiniti of Thousand Oaks where he was a concierge and product specialist in the customer relations department.
“I am sad and very angry,” his father Marc told Greek ANT1 TV and revealed that his son was in counseling after he survived the Las Vegas massacre.
“Every time he heard a loud noise, he thought it was a gun,” the father said.
A 2009 graduate of Thousand Oaks High School who spent 2 1/2 years in the U.S. Navy, Orfanos was at the Borderline Bar and Grill to meet friends for dinner, his father, Marc, told the Ventura County Star of the USA TODAY Network.
“It’s particularly ironic that after surviving the worst mass shooting in modern history, he went on to be killed in his hometown,” he said.
His Facebook profile listed him as a veteran of the Navy. According to a 2009 article in his hometown newspaper, the Thousand Oaks Acorn, he was also an Eagle Scout. Under a photo of the then-18-year-old Orfanos, the newspaper reported that his Eagle Scout project involved public safety at Thousand Oaks High School, and that he’d earned it as a member of Troop No. 765 of Redeemer Lutheran Church.
As word of his death spread friends on social media paid tribute to the friendly, gentle, bearded young man they knew.
“Can’t believe you’re gone, Tel,” wrote Zoe Romney on a photo of her with Orfanos. “I’m gonna miss you always picking on me and trying to make me laugh when I’m feeling down.”
A devastated post was added on Facebook page of The Route 91 Family, a page related to the 2017 shooting at the Route 91 Harvest music festival in Las Vegas.
“Telemachus Orfanos has joined our 58 angels,” the post on The Route 91 Family’s Facebook page read. “Our hearts are very broken.”
Authorities still haven’t named all the victims in the attack at the bar in Thousand Oaks, California, about 40 miles west of Los Angeles. Police said the gunman, identified as Ian David Long, opened fire inside the country-western dance bar with a Glock 21 .45-caliber handgun, killing at least 11 victims at the scene. test
The bar was hosting an event for college students and was crowded with 19- to 25-year-olds, Sheriff Geoff Dean said. It was the deadliest mass shooting since 17 students and teachers were killed in February at a school in Parkland, Florida.
