Ryan Guidus was with his baby daughter on the patio at Cook's Corner Bar when he heard what sounded like fireworks.
Confusion followed among the crowd at the bar, many of whom came for an evening of live music and the $8 Spaghetti Night special at the venue nestled in Orange County's Trabuco Canyon at the bottom of a hillside.
Guidus soon realized that popping sound was gunfire. People began screaming and running. He grabbed his baby daughter from her stroller and ran outside seeking cover, charging up the nearby hillside with his girl in his arms.
Get Southern California news, weather forecasts and entertainment stories to your inbox. Sign up for NBC LA newsletters.
"You heard, 'Pop, pop,'" Guidus said. "People didn't know what to think. Thought it was like a firework.
"The first thing I did is grabbed my little daughter out of her stroller and booked it. Booked it up that hill and tried to hide with a group of people."
Guidus said more gunshots could be heard as he and other people stayed on the tree-covered hill overlooking the bar and scenic Santiago Canyon Road.
Jennifer Ziv heard the gunfire from her nearby backyard.
"I heard some noises, thought maybe it was fireworks," said Ziv. "It just went on and on and on. I'd say for five to seven minutes."
When it finally ended, four people, including the gunman, were dead and six people were injured. Authorities identified the shooter as a former law enforcement officer who targeted his estranged wife.
The gunfire erupted around 7 p.m. Deputies arrived two minutes later and encountered the shooter two minutes after that, authorities said. A law enforcement source told NBC4 that deputies killed the gunman.
A witness told NBC4 that the shooter and his wife were going through a divorce, though OCSD Undersheriff Jeff Hallock said it was too early to tell whether the shooting stemmed from a domestic dispute. The witness, Betty Fruichantie, said she was sitting next to the wife when the gunman used two guns to shoot at his spouse multiple times.
At least one weapon was found at the scene.
“We were sitting there listening to the band and all of sudden, from behind us, we hear shooting. A bunch of shooting,” Fruichantie said. “I thought it was just firecrackers, she didn’t say anything. People were getting shot. People were getting shot.”
As of Thursday morning, two patients remained in critical condition. One of the most seriously injured patients, identified only as a man, suffered a gunshot wound to the chest. Another critical patient was shot in the jaw, according to hospital officials.
Four other patients suffered non-life-threatening injuries.
The shooting is the deadliest in Orange County since a man opened fire at a real estate office in Orange in March 2021. That shooting left four people, including a 9-year-old boy, dead.
In October 2011, a gunman killed eight people in a shooting at a Seal Beach salon in the county’s deadliest mass shooting.
