US ballroom killer, 72, was hunting wife
Man said to be America’s oldest mass shooter took his own life when he was surrounded by police
THE elderly man who killed 10 people in a ballroom in Monterey Park was trying to kill his wife when he opened fire on innocent dancers, US police believe.
Hu Can Tran, 72, believed to be the oldest mass shooter in US history, shot himself on Sunday night as police swarmed around his van following an hours-long manhunt in the predominantly Asian city near Los Angeles.
Tran, a former instructor at the studio where he fired on dancers, had attempted a second attack at another dancing studio less than half an hour after the first massacre.
Tran taught at the Star Ballroom Dance Club “almost every night” in the late 2000s and early 2010s, it emerged yesterday.
His ex-wife, whom he wooed with free dance lessons but divorced in 2005, told CNN that he would “become upset” if she missed a step while they were dancing because it made him look bad.
Another friend said he would complain that the dance instructors at the club did not like him and said “evil things about him”.
He was “hostile to a lot of people” at the studio, they added.
“There is increasing evidence this was domestic violence” and he was “looking for his wife” police sources told Los Angeles magazine yesterday.
The Los Angeles County sheriff’s department has yet to comment on any motive.
Chester Chong, the chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce of Los Angeles and a community leader in Monterey Park, also said Tran was hunting for his spouse.
“This hate is because of wife and husband,” Mr Chong told ABC7 News, add- ing that the suspect may have been jealous because he was not invited to the party that his spouse attended.
“I believe because of that there was the killing of innocent people.”
It is not known if his wife is among those who died. CCTV footage released yesterday showed a member of staff at the second club wrestling the gun from his hand before telling him to leave.
Brandon Tsay, 26, whose grandparents founded the ballroom, told ABC’S Good Morning America that he thought he was going to die.
“Something came over me. I realised I needed to get the weapon away from him, I needed to take this weapon, disarm him or else everybody would have died,” Mr Tsay said.
“When I got the courage, I lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon and we had a struggle.”
Once Mr Tsay seized the gun, he pointed it at the man and shouted: “Get the hell out of here, I’ll shoot, get away, go!”
The assailant paused, but then headed back to his van, and Mr Tsay called the police, who soon found Tran dead in his vehicle.
Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and is composed mostly of Asian immigrants from China or firstgeneration Asian Americans.
The shooting happened in the heart of its downtown where red lanterns decorated the streets for the lunar new year festivities.
The massacre was America’s 36th mass shooting this year, where at least four people were shot, excluding the shooter.
It is the deadliest attack since May last year, when 21 people were killed in a primary school in Uvalde, Texas.
Joe Biden, the US president, said: “Many families are grieving tonight, or praying that their loved one will recover from their wounds.”
Speaking at a press conference on Sunday, sheriff Robert Luna confirmed the suspect shot himself as police officers closed in on the van he used to flee the scene of an attempted second shooting in Alhambra.