WESTLAKE VILLAGE (CNS) - Funeral services will be held in Westlake Village today for Ventura County Sheriff's Department Sgt. Ron Helus, who was killed during the mass shooting at the Borderline nightclub in Thousand Oaks.
Helus was the first law enforcement officer to burst into the Borderline club late the night of Nov. 7 amid reports of a shooting inside the building.
Sheriff's officials say Helus, 54, and a California Highway Patrol officer with him exchanged gunfire with the suspect. Helus was shot, and the CHP officer managed to pull him from the building. He died at a hospital.
The gunman, 28-year-old Ian David Long, a former Marine and Cal State Northridge student, was later found dead inside the building from an apparently self-inflicted gunshot wound. Eleven other people were fatally shot by Long inside the club, which was crowded with mostly students during a country-music- themed college night.
Helus, a 29-year-veteran of the department, was a married father of a grown son. He had just called his wife and told her he loved her before he responded to the Borderline bar, sheriff's officials said.
The funeral service will be held at Calvary Community Church in Westlake Village, followed by a graveside service at the nearby Pierce Brothers Valley Mortuary and Cemetery, both in Los Angeles County.