He Survived The Cook's Corner Mass Shooting. Is It OK To Be Happy?

Dave Stretch is determined not to go down the rabbit hole of 'what ifs' when he thinks about the mass shooting at Cook's Corner. "For my own, you know, mental health sake," he told LAist.

Stretch survived the shooting with a relatively minor wound, unlike the three victims who died in the shooting and at least two others who are still in the hospital. Stretch says he can't imagine what their families are going through right now. And he can hardly believe he escaped without more serious injuries.

In fact, the bass player is planning to go to a rehearsal on Thursday, just a week after he and fellow M Street band member Ed Means were shot while on stage at the historic biker bar in Trabuco Canyon.

Stretch and Means are among nine people shot by a retired Ventura police sergeant who appeared to have initially targeted his wife, Marie Snowling. She had recently filed for divorce.

The three victims killed were John Leehey, 67, Glen Sprowl Jr., 53, and Tonya Clark, 49. The shooter, John Snowling, was killed by Orange County Sheriff's deputies. A spokesperson for Mission Providence Hospital said two additional victims were still in their care, and both are expected to have a full recovery.

Stretch was shot below the hip. Means was shot in the arm. Both had wounds that were minor enough to warrant just one night in the hospital before they were released.

This aerial photo shows Cook's Corner, the scene of mass shooting, on Thursday, Aug. 24, 2023, in Trabuco Canyon.

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Jae C. Hong

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AP

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Stretch said the shooting has brought him much closer to his family, friends and bandmates. “Our band, I mean we were pretty close before, but this is like a forged-in-fire family now. I love them fiercely. And my kids and my girlfriend and basically everybody around me. I just feel like somebody from the 60s all of a sudden just loving on everybody.”

Stretch said he plans to get back on stage soon. "He's not taking that away from me," Stretch said of the shooter. "He's already done enough damage."

A night that first felt like a good gig

M Street is an Orange County-based group that describes itself on its website as a "high-energy rock/cover/dance band." (The band's website now leads with a banner that reads "Our hearts go out to all of those affected by the Cook's Corner incident.")

Playing Cook's Corner, a popular restaurant and watering hole for both bikers and local families, was not a regular gig for M Street. The night of the shooting was the first time the band had played on the bar's smaller, indoor stage. They had played the larger, outdoor stage several times, Stretch said.

Stretch had been busy at his day job as director of operational analysis for the grocery chain Smart & Final. He hadn't sent out his usual weekly email blast to friends and followers inviting them to come hear him play, an omission for which he was later relieved.

He finished work late on Wednesday, got to Cook's late, and was feeling a little stressed when the band finally started playing.

But a few songs into their first set, people in the crowd were dancing and Stretch was beginning to have fun.

"It was starting to feel right," he said. "It's like, 'This is going to be a good gig.'"

Confusion, panic and then pain

Then Stretch saw a man walk in to the left of the stage with a pistol in each hand. He said it looked like the man was shooting up into the ceiling.

"My first emotion of the whole thing, it wasn't fear, it was confusion," Stretch said. "I'm like, what's this guy doing, and why is he shooting something up in the air? And then that kind of passed and my next thought [was] 'Oh man, that is so not cool that somebody would do that, like, as a joke.'"

But Stretch soon became conscious of the crowd's panicked reaction and realized he was in the middle of a mass shooting.

He suddenly felt a pain near his hip, like someone had punched him. "Immediately I knew what it was. I said, 'I've been shot. This is real.'"

Since the beginning of 2023, 476 mass shootings have taken place in the U.S., according to the nonprofit Gun Violence Archive.

More than 2,000 people were injured in those shootings and 533 people were killed, including 25 suspects.

Realizing he'd been shot

Stretch ran out a door to the parking lot to get away from the gunfire. He saw that there was blood on his jeans but he felt OK. "I thought it was just, you know, a graze," he said. Later, he would realize the bullet went cleanly through his buttock.

Stretch heard more gunshots outside and decided to run back into the bar. "I started thinking I don't know where this guy is but if he comes around the back of the building, I can't be here."

Officials later reported that after Snowling fired an initial round of shots — including the ones that hit Stretch and Means — he retreated to his car for more weapons.

Stretch saw that his bandmate Means had also been shot, and he did what he could to help Means stop the bleeding. Then Stretch took cover behind the bar, made a quick call to his girlfriend and texted his two adult children and his brother: "Shooter. Hit in butt."

Later, his kids would tease him, in the kind of way only tragedy survivors can, about the terse content. "Like, really, that's it, Dad? That's the last words I'm going to get from you?" Stretch remembered them saying.

Law enforcement officers are seen on a blocked off road in Trabuco Canyon following the mass shooting at the nearby Cook's Corner bar and restaurant.

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Frederic J. Brown

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From behind the bar, Stretch heard a barrage of gunfire and saw sheriff's deputies running past the window. Help had arrived. Authorities said deputies shot and killed Snowling within minutes of their arrival.

"I am so grateful for them," Stretch said of the dozens of law enforcement officers who responded to the shooting, "that they were as close as they were, that they got here as fast as they did, that they put the guy down as fast as they did."

Bandmates share a recovery room

Stretch and his bandmate Means shared an ambulance to Mission Providence Hospital in nearby Mission Viejo. Then, they shared a recovery room at the hospital. "I think that helped me, probably helped both of us, emotionally quite a lot to be able to have however many hours in that room together," Stretch said.

Stretch credits "dumb luck" with the fact that the bullet that struck him caused minimal damage. "It went through me like butter," he said. 

Means, who was shot in the arm, was equally lucky. Stretch noticed his bandmate wiggling his fingers in his adjacent bed at the hospital. "I said, 'Hey, do you think you can make a D chord?' And he makes a D chord shape with his hand."

Stretch decided he and Means were probably going to be fine.

His relative good fortune has made him feel both delighted and a little guilty. Not survivor's guilt, exactly. More like enjoyment guilt.

"Because I can only think of my particular situation in all this as a good thing," he said. "But in the face of that gladness, there's three families that are going through I can't even imagine what right now."

Looking in the mirror at the bruised, purple line that marks where the bullet traveled through his buttock — 8-inches long, Stretch measured — is sobering. "When I look at that, that's what makes me think of the violence that that gun did to others and could have done in different places to me," he said.

Shutting out the 'what ifs'

Back home and healing, Stretch is still battling against the "what ifs."

"What if that shot was 12 or 18 inches higher? What if I'd stayed out in the parking lot? What if somebody I knew had come to the show and gotten hurt?" he said. "I can't, I can't go there. And so I'm not letting myself go there for my own sanity."

Instead he's trying to embrace the outpouring of love he's experienced since the shooting.

"You can have this just unimaginably horrible thing and right next to that you can have the response that I've gotten from people from all areas of my life. It feels like such a wonderful and flattering and humbling thing. It's like, how can I have these two emotions about this event?"

Stretch said he is planning to see a crisis counselor, in case the reality of what he's been through hasn't totally hit yet.

"I don't want to make light of it but I don't want to make it more than it is either. So I'm just going to … make sure I recognize what's going on in my head and make sure everything's OK," he said.

What Stretch is not? Surprised that a mass shooting happened "here," in his orbit. "We've long been on notice that it can happen here, and it does happen here, and it happens all the time," he said.

Stretch said he's not a "gun person." But "I'm not a 'take everybody's gun away person' either," he said. Given the estimated hundreds of millions of guns in circulation in the U.S., he's uncertain which measures, if any, might help reduce gun violence.

For now, Stretch is opting for acceptance. "The reality is life is pretty uncertain and I just keep coming back to, you know, love well and live your best life because that's really what life is, I think."

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