Man who saved lives in Borderline shooting killed in motorcycle crash

A 24-year-old old man credited with saving lives during the 2018 Borderline Bar & Grill shooting in Thousand Oaks was killed in a motorcycle crash on Saturday, according to officials.

Matt Wennerstrom was traveling east on Lynn Road near East Kelley Road in the Newbury Park area of Thousand Oaks at 6:20 p.m. when his motorcycle collided with a vehicle, said the Ventura County Sheriff’s Office. Wennerstrom was pronounced dead at the scene.

The driver and passenger of the vehicle were taken to a hospital with unknown injuries, officials said. Police said the cause of the crash is still under investigation.

Wennerstrom was a regular at Borderline Bar & Grill and was there when a gunman went on a deadly rampage inside the country music club, killing 13 people and injuring 18 others. The mass shooting was one of the deadliest in American history.

Wennerstrom had been inside the bar for an hour when he heard gunfire, according to an account from 2018. He pulled as many people as he could to the floor and under a pool table. He quieted those around him and counted the shots as they rang out.

When the gunman stopped shooting, possibly to reload, Wennerstrom enlisted others to help smash some of the bar’s windows with chairs, hoping to escape before the next volley of gunfire.

“All I could think about was how helpless I was,” Wennerstrom told The Times in an interview.