Mass shooter’s motive elusive as dead mourned

Investigators scrambled on Monday to discover why a 72-year-old gunman opened fire in a California dance hall popular with older patrons and killed 10 people before fatally turning a gun on himself hours later.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said the reasons behind the Lunar New Year massacre carried out by Huu Can Tran on Saturday night remained elusive.

Officials worked into Monday trying to identify the 10 people he killed on Saturday night at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park, about 11 km east of downtown Los Angeles. Another 10 people were wounded and seven remained hospitalised late on Sunday.

Tran’s rampage could have been far worse. About 20 minutes after the shooting in Monterey Park, he entered another dance club in the neighbouring city of Alhambra. There, two patrons wrestled a weapon away from the septuagenarian before he could get a shot off. Tran then fled. “I can tell you that the suspect walked in there, probably with the intent to kill more people, and two brave community members decided they were going to jump into action and disarm him,” Luna told reporters in a Sunday evening briefing.

About 12 hours later, police officers in the city of Torrance, 20 miles southwest of Monterey Park, approached a white cargo van Tran was driving. As officers neared the van, they heard a single gun shot from inside when Tran killed himself.

Luna did not identify any of the victims but said the five men and five women appeared to be in their 50s, 60s and beyond. The sheriff said the pistol Tran used was likely illegal in California, where state laws ban any magazine holding more than 10 rounds.

“We want to know, we want to know how something this awful can happen,” Luna told reporters. —