A gunman who killed 10 people at a Monterey Park dance studio during Lunar New Year celebrations has been identified as a 72-year-old Hemet man, authorities told news outlets.
Huu Can Tran died on Sunday, Jan. 22, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound during a standoff with police in a parking lot at a Torrance strip mall, the Los Angeles Times reported.
Tran killed 10 people and injured at least 10 at a dance studio in Monterey Park around 10:20 p.m. Saturday, according to a press release from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department.
He was later disarmed by a bystander at another dance studio in nearby Alhambra and fled, KABC reported. On Sunday, police deployed Tran’s white van in Torrance and shot himself.
“We still have no clarity on the motive,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna told the Los Angeles Times. “We want to know how something so terrible could happen.”
The Monterey Park attack followed a New Year’s Eve celebration attended by tens of thousands of people in the predominantly Asian community.
“The idea is for families to come together to enjoy and just have some time to get together,” Yingying Guan told KTLA. “So many innocent victims.”
Mayor Pro Tem Jose Sanchez told the station more than 100,000 people showed up for the celebration, the first after three years of cancellations due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
“When something like this happens — and I never thought it would happen in our community — it’s very hard to process,” Sanchez said. “There is so much sadness.”
“It was just the most horrible thing,” Lynette Ma told KTLA. “It’s just awful because you never expect it to happen anywhere so close to home.”
Police who arrived at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio Saturday night after the shooting described a chaotic scene of panicked patrons fleeing the facility, the sheriff’s release said.
Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese said officers discovered a massacre at the dance studio “that none of them were prepared for,” according to the Los Angeles Times.
The weapon seized by bystanders at the Alhambra dance studio was a “semi-automatic magazine-fed assault pistol, with an extended magazine,” which is illegal in California, authorities told the publication.
A New Year’s Eve celebration that was scheduled for Sunday in Monterey Park has been canceled.
Hemet is a city of 90,000 in the San Jacinto Valley, about 90 miles southeast of Los Angeles.
10 killed, 10 injured in shooting at Los Angeles ballroom dance studio, sheriff says
