LUNAR NEW YEAR MASSACRE
Gunman kills 10 in dance-hall rampage
A gunman opened fire in a ballroom dance hall in Southern California — killing 10 people and wounding at least 10 others — following Lunar New Year celebrations, sparking a daylong manhunt that ended with the suspect fatally shooting himself in a van, police and reports said.
Pandemonium broke out at the Star Dance Studio in Monterey Park at around 10:20 p.m. Saturday, with witnesses and police describing how revelers — some of them injured — streamed out of the club after a lone shooter began firing inside.
The suspect then fled the scene — and may have tried to hit up a “rival” dance hall in nearby Alhambra about 20 minutes after the massacre, police said.
He was disarmed by people at the Lai Lai Ballroom, according to police, and no shots were fired at that location, which is about 3 miles away from Star Dance Studio.
“He was disarmed by two community members who I consider to be heroes because they save[d] lives,” Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said at a press conference Sunday night. “This could have been much worse.”
SWAT closes in
Hours later, on Sunday afternoon, armored tanks — and a bomb squad — descended upon a white van linked to the suspect in Torrance, about 37 miles from Monterey Park.
Just before 1 p.m., a SWAT team opened the passenger door of the vehicle, and then the side doors. Photos showed the suspect slumped over in the driver’s seat. The alleged killer had turned a gun on himself inside the van.
Authorities identified the shooter as 72-year-old Huu Can
Tran. Sheriff Luna said Tran acted alone and officials are investigating a motive.
Officials found a handgun inside the van as well as evidence linking Tran to the massacre. In a second location, investigators recovered an assault pistol that had an extended large-capacity magazine attached to it.
Earlier in the day, Luna’s department 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.
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 was purposely shielding some info from the public, in part because someone called a hospital that was treating some of the injured, and threatened to “finish the job.”
The sheriff didn’t specify what type of weapon was used in the attack, but said, “We can tell you it was not a high-powered assault rifle.” Luna couldn’t say if more than one weapon was used.
Tragic turn
Five men and five women were slain during the rampage at the club, about 8 miles outside downtown Los Angeles, according to police.
Ten others were wounded and being treated at local hospitals — their conditions ranging from stable to critical, officials said.
The “assumption” is that the victims were “probably” of Asian descent, Luna told reporters. The victims had not yet been identified and it was not immediately clear how old they were, Luna said.
The mass slaying 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 from the dance hall.
Responding officers saw dozout ens of people streaming of the club, some of them injured, said Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese.
“My officers put together a react team and went inside to see if the suspect was still inentering side,” he said.
“They were probably
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 — was canceled as police interviewed dozens of witnesses and scoured video footage as they hunted the killer.
At the press briefing, 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 “apprised” 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.”
‘Weird and shocking’
Lai Lai Ballroom said it would reopen for lessons Monday after canceling events Sunday as an extra precaution.
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.
“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.”
“It’s really shocking because ballroom, it’s a small community,” another ballroom 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.”