MONTEREY PARK, Calif. —The suspected gunman wanted for killing 10 people and wounding at least 10 more at a dance club Saturday is dead after shooting himself and has been IDed as a 72-year-old man, police officials announced.
The alleged mass murderer, identified as Huu Can Tran, turned a gun on himself inside a cargo van following a stand-off with law enforcement, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said during an evening press conference outside Monterey Park City Hall.
The sheriff said Tran, who’s accused of shooting up a Monterey Park ballroom following a Lunar New Year celebration, acted alone and officials are still investigating a motive.
At 10:20 a.m., police in Torrance, Calif. spotted a white van matching the suspect vehicle description. They followed the van into a shopping mall parking lot, where they heard a single gunshot coming from inside the van.
The local police officers retreated and called in tactical teams to respond.
Armored tanks — and a bomb squad — then descended upon the van before noon local time, in what became a more than hour-long standoff.
Just before 1 p.m. local time, a SWAT team opened the passenger door of the vehicle, and then the side doors. Photos showed a man slumped over in the driver’s seat — who Luna said investigators confirmed was the shooting suspect.
Luna’s department earlier released a wanted poster of the suspect, showing him in glasses and wearing a dark winter beanie with a white design, leather jacket and glasses. He also didn’t rule out the possibility of a second suspect, but provided no evidence there might be one.
Chester Chong, chairman of the Chinese Chamber Commerce of Los Angeles, said he heard that the shooting was related to a domestic violence issue, telling The Post, “I was told the wife was invited to the Lunar New Year Party and the husband was not.”
Luna said the department is purposefully shielding some information from the public, in part because someone called a hospital with some of the injured victims and threatened to “finish the job.”
The sheriff said officials found a handgun as well as evidence linking Tran to the Lunar New Year massacre inside the van. Investigators recovered an assault pistol that had an extended large capacity magazine attached to it from a second location, where no shots were fired.
Five men and five women were slain during the rampage at the ballroom dance club, about eight miles outside downtown Los Angeles, according to police. Ten others were wounded and seven were still being treated at local hospitals as of Sunday evening — their conditions ranging from stable to critical, officials said.
The “assumption” is that the victims were “probably” of Asian descent, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a press briefing. The victims had not yet been identified and it was not immediately clear how old they were, but they were believed to be in their 50s and up, Luna said.
“There is a male suspect that fled the scene, has been described as a male Asian,” Luna said.
“It’s taken us a while and please be patient with us because as we are interviewing witnesses and victims we’ve gotten different descriptions of one suspect.”
Police said Tran was the same man who walked into a “rival” dancehall in nearby Alhambra with a firearm about 20 minutes after the mass murder.
The suspect was disarmed by two people at the Lai Lai Ballroom, according to police, and no shots were fired at that location, which is about three miles away from Star Dance Studio.
The would-be shooter in Alhambra was armed with a magazine-fed semi automatic assault pistol and fled the scene in a white cargo van, Luna said.
“He was disarmed by two community members who I consider to be heroes because they save lives,” Luna said. “This could have been much worse.”
The mass murder was the deadliest in the US since the massacre at a Uvalde, Texas elementary school that killed 21 people last May, and was the fifth such horrifying incident in the country thus far in 2023.
Police first received a 911 call at 10:22 p.m., a little more than an hour after a Lunar New Year festival that attracted up to 100,000 people had wrapped up a short distance away from the dancehall.
“We were just wrapping up the final shutdown of the Lunar New Year event,” said Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese.
“I had dozens of officers here throughout the day and the evening at the Lunar New Year event, so our response to the scene was within minutes,” he said.
The responding officers saw dozens of people streaming out of the dance club, some of them injured, Wiese said.
“My officers put together a react team and went inside to see if the suspect was still inside,” he said.
“They were probably entering that business within a minute or two of responding, and that’s how we’ve been trained, and that’s how we respond,” said Wiese, as he offered a sharp contrast to the 77 minutes that officers waited to respond to the Uvalde school shooting.
The second day of the annual celebration — slated for Sunday — had been canceled as police interviewed dozens of witnesses and scoured video footage as they hunted the elusive killer.
Even as the mass murderer remained at large, officials did not impose a shelter in place order on the San Gabriel Valley city of about 60,000 and stressed that the community was “safe right now.”
“Our thoughts prayers and condolences go out right now, not only to the victims, their families, uh but this Monterey Park community,” Luna said.
“We’re using every resource to apprehend this suspect in what we believe to be one of the county’s most heinous cases,” he added, while saying state and federal authorities were also assisting with the probe.
Wiese cautioned that it was a “large investigation that will go on for many days and perhaps many months,” and Rep. Judy Chu said President Biden had been “appraised” of the “horrific shooting.”
“This could have been so much worse, only hours earlier there were thousands there,” the Democrat said.
“What I know about the people here is that we will get through this together,” she added of the “resilient” community.
In a statement, Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass added: “Families deserve to celebrate the holidays in peace — mass shootings and gun violence are a plague on our communities.
“As investigations determine whether these murders were motivated by Asian hate, we continue to stand united against all attempts to divide us,” Bass said. “My heart goes out to Monterey Park and the families and friends of those lost.”
In a statement, Lai Lai Ballroom said it would remain closed Sunday as investigators combed through the crime scene at Star Dance Studio.
“In observance of the tragedy at Star Dance last night, Lai Lai Ballroom will be closed today. Tea and night dances are suspended until further notice,” the statement read.
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“Lai Lai will reopen Monday for lessons only. As an extra precaution, All students and teachers are subject to search prior to entering the studio. Our prayers go out to all the victims families.”
It was not immediately clear what type of event Star Dance Studio had been hosting as revelers-turned-victims brought in the Year of the Rabbit.
Monica Orca, a former assistant at the studio, said Saturdays are usually reserved for Chinese social dancing where local members of the community can practice the ballroom moves they’ve learned from professional instructors.
“Usually on Saturdays around that time, it’s reserved for social dancing attended mostly by people of Chinese descent, mostly they are 50 years and over,” Orca told The Post on Sunday. “This is where people come to study from professional dancers. Even in the ballroom community, I’ve never seen any violence at all. Not even one fight. Nothing. This is really weird and shocking. We go to ballroom for stress relief. But if these shootings could happen in schools and now ballroom, it can happen anywhere.”
Orca said she spoke to the owner of Star Dance Studio, who was left shaken.
“I Imagine this is something that’s shocking for her,” she told The Post, adding that the owner was not injured.
The Star Ballroom hosts various showcases and has a diverse clientele even though it’s in a predominantly Asian community, Orca said, describing the studio as “a special place.”
Another ballroom instructor who rented the Star Dance space for specific nights to teach ballroom dancing said the space has hosted the Chinese social club on Saturdays for more than a decade, but Saturday night was probably a special event because of the holiday.
“That event has been going on for more than 10 years and it’s one of the more popular places on a Saturday night in that area,” said the man, who asked to remain anonymous.
“But there is a rival studio, the Lai Lai Studio, which is like four or five miles away. So the students who go to Star Dance sometimes go to Lai Lai Studio, which is popular on Sundays. Depending on the expertise of the teacher that night, the customers sometimes go back and forth between the two places.
“These two studios have been there for decades and they always compared and competed with each other,” the instructor said.
He added: “I have students from Singapore who have been texting me and asking if we are OK.”
“It’s really shocking because ballroom, it’s a small community,” the instructor said. “Ballroom is about exercising and having fun. Most of the people who go there are seniors. I’ve been to a lot of countries teaching ballroom but never had something like this happen.”
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