Tia Mowry and Adam Housley are mourning the loss of Housley’s niece, 18-year-old Alaina Housley, who is among the victims of a deadly mass shooting at Borderline Bar in Thousand Oaks, California Wednesday night.
“My sweet, sweet…Alaina. Oh how I miss you. Oh how I miss u,” Housley captioned an image of his niece on Instagram, adding the hashtag “heartbroken.”
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Mowry also paid tribute to the 18-year-old, taking to her own Instagram account with the same photo to write “Our sweet Alaina. We are broken. Our hearts are broken. We love you.”
Alaina had reportedly gone to Borderline Bar, which was holding a college country night, with a group of friends Wednesday night to line dance. When 28-year-old gunman Ian David Long entered the bar and opened fire, killing a total of 12 people, the group attempted to flee the scene. Alaina, however, had not been seen or heard from since the shooting, and Housley reported that her Apple Watch and iPhone still pinged her location as being on the dance floor.
Housley, a former Fox News correspondent, had attempted to search for Alaina at the Los Robles Regional Medical Center, though he was turned away by a guard at around 3:30 a.m. due to the facility being placed on lockdown. He and Mowry-Housley continued asking for prayers and any information on social media.
Later in the day, Housley and his wife, Tamera Mowry-Housley, confirmed that Alaina was among the victims.
“Our hearts are broken. We just learned that our niece Alaina was one of the victims of last night’s shooting at Borderline bar in Thousand Oaks,” they said in a statement via their joint representative to USA Today. “Alaina was an incredible young woman with so much life ahead of her and we are devastated that her life was cut short in this manner. We thank everyone for your prayers and ask for privacy at this time.”
Alaina’s family later released a statement of their own, writing that “words can’t describe our grief over losing our daughter, Alaina. She was everything we could hope for in a child: kind, smart, beautiful, and respectful.”
“We want to honor Alaina by focusing on how she lived her life,” the statement continued. “She would have enjoyed the public debate that is certain to happen after this tragedy. But she would have insisted that it be respectful with an eye toward solving these senseless shootings.”
