California authorities were seeking the motive that led an individual to kill 10 people Saturday night at a ballroom dance club in an Asian community in the Los Angeles area during Lunar New Year celebrations.
The suspect was found dead on Sunday from a shot he fired himself in a van authorities say fled in when people stopped him from committing another shooting on Saturday.
The massacre was the fifth mass murder in the United States this month and the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the man as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran and said there were no other suspects at large. At a late-night news conference, he said the motive for the attack remained unknown. In addition to the dead, there are 10 wounded, seven of them still hospitalized.
Although Luna explained that she did not have the exact age of the victims, she noted that all of the deceased appeared to be in their 50s.
The suspect was carrying what the police chief described as a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine. A second gun was found in the van in which Tran’s body was found.
Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese said late Sunday that officers arrived at the scene less than three minutes after receiving the report. There they found a huge carnage and people trying to escape through all the doors.
“When they got to the parking lot, the place was in chaos,” Wiese said.
About 20 to 30 minutes after the first attack, the assailant entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in the nearby city of Alhambra. But the people there managed to disarm him and the man escaped, Luna reported.
The vehicle was found in Torrance, another town with many Asian Americans, about 34.5 kilometers from that second location.
After surrounding the vehicle for hours, security agents approached and agreed. The body of a person appeared to have collapsed on the handlebars and was later removed. Members of a raid team checked the contents of the van before leaving.
Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 located on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and made up mostly of first-generation Asian immigrants from China or Asian Americans.
The shooting occurred in the center, where red lanterns decorated the streets for the Lunar New Year festivities. A police vehicle was parked near a large banner proclaiming “Happy Year of the Rabbit!”
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