A gunman opened fire as a band played at a California biker bar, leaving 3 dead and 6 wounded

TRABUCO CANYON, Calif. — The cover band at the historic Southern California biker bar had just launched into their next song when the gunman walked in and began firing.

Some froze, others ran as the bullets flew inside busy Cook’s Corner, which was holding its weekly spaghetti night on Wednesday.

After shooting his estranged wife, the man shot and killed her dinner companion, then began firing at random, Orange County Sheriff Don Barnes said Thursday. He went outside to retrieve more guns from his car and kept firing, Barnes said, killing a total of three people and wounding six others.

Within minutes, deputies arrived and killed the shooter, Orange County Sheriff’s Sgt. Frank Gonzalez said.

As the shooting began, M Street band keyboardist Mark Johnson hid behind a speaker with his wife, singer Debbie Johnson.

“Once he started shooting, it was very indiscriminate,” Mark Johnson said.

The Orange County District Attorney’s Office identified the gunman as John Snowling, 59, a former police officer. Those killed included a man who approached Snowling in the parking lot after Snowling went outside to get more guns.

Betty Fruichantie told NBC4 Los Angeles that she was with the shooter’s wife, Marie Snowling, who fell to the floor. With bullets flying past her face, Fruichantie ran and hid in a restroom with others.

“And when we came out, people were on the floor and people were like over people trying to help them, just holding their wounds,” she said.

Brandon Koslowsky told KTLA-TV that he barricaded himself in the liquor room with a bartender and another employee when the shooting began.

As the shooting continued outside the bar, he came out and tried to help people, including a wounded woman who died.

“I don’t know their names. You know, there’s a lot of blood,” he said.

Marie Snowling was shot in the jaw and improved from critical to stable condition, Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner said Thursday afternoon. One of the six wounded people was released from the hospital.

Marie Snowling cited irreconcilable differences in filing for divorce in December 2022 after being married to John Snowling for more than three decades, Ventura County online court records show. The case was scheduled for a mandatory settlement conference in November.

Her father, William Mosby, of Lake Forest, told The Orange County Register, that John Snowling could not “deal with the divorce.”

He had been living in Ohio on a 7-acre property with his dog, according to his divorce lawyer, Tristan teGroen. He said there was “no murmur of of domestic violence or threats or anything like that from the other attorney.”

“I did not see anything on the horizon that would give me an inkling of what happened last night,” teGroen said.

“He struck me as a calm, collected, articulate man with a good memory and an animal lover.”

Kenneth H.J. Henjum, Marie Snowling’s attorney, said in an email that her family was in shock and was requesting privacy.

John Snowling had worked for the police department in Ventura, a coastal city north of Los Angeles, from 1986 to 2014.