Tamera Mowry-Housley and husband frantically search for niece after Thousand Oaks shooting


Erin Jensen


USA TODAY

Published 9:41 AM EST Nov 8, 2018

A California shooting left “The Real” host and “Sister, Sister” star Tamera Mowry-Housley looking for information about her niece on Twitter early Thursday morning.

Twelve people were killed, and multiple people were injured after a mass shooting about 40 miles west of Los Angeles late Wednesday after a gunman opened fire inside a country-western dance bar.

Responding to a tweet about a person’s missing suitemate, Mowry-Housley wrote: “Ashely this is her aunt Tamera Mowry Housley. Can you please DM me your information?”

The suitemate then tweeted that she’d been in contact with “Adam,” Mowry-Housley’s husband, former Fox News correspondent Adam Housley, and that their niece, Alaina Housley, was the only one out of “a handful of girls (who) went to line dance tonight” who are unaccounted for.

Housley, meanwhile, asked his nearly 100,000 Twitter followers for prayers.

“Please pray if you believe….pray,” later telling them the prayers were for his niece, who he described as “A beautiful soul.”

He responded to actress Holly Robinson Peete at around 7:50 a.m. ET that his niece had still not been found.

Los Angeles Times reporter Andrea Castillo shared on Twitter that Housley visited the Los Robles Regional Medical Center looking for his niece.

“A guard didn’t let him through, saying (the hospital) was on lockdown,” Castillo, who was at the hospital, tweeted. “He said Alaina, a Pepperdine freshman, was at the bar with several friends. Her Apple Watch and iPhone still showed her location on the dance floor.”

Castillo continued, tweeting: “Housley said two of Alaina’s suite mates jumped through a broken window to escape and are at a hospital with major glass wounds. As they ran away from the bar, someone screamed ‘Hey! Get the (expletive) down on the ground!’ They told Housley they believe it was the gunman.”

“But they kept running toward houses near Los Robles Greens golf course, where they got help from residents,” Castillo added.

Housley told the LA Times he feared the worst.

“My gut is saying she’s inside the bar, dead,” he said. “I’m hoping I’m wrong.”

Mowry-Housley gushed over her niece on Instagram in March of last year.

The actress captioned a close-up of the teen with teased curls and iridescent eye shadow: “My niece Alaina Housley. I can’t believe I met her when she was five. She now is a Junior in high school doing a photo shoot with a 70’s theme. Kill it beauty. Good luck in all your future endeavors.”

USA TODAY has reached out to Mowry-Housley’s rep for comment.

Contributing: Ashley May

More: What we know about the fatal mass shooting at a Thousand Oaks, California, dance bar

More: ‘He died a hero’: Ventura County Sheriff Sgt. Ron Helus among those killed in bar shooting

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