Gunman may have targeted some victims, randomly killed others - report
A law enforcement official has told the New York Times that the suspected gunman had recently visited his local police station to report that his family was poisoning him.
The attacker reportedly lived in a mobile home in a gated retirement community in the city of Hemet, about 85 miles (137 km) east of Los Angeles.
As we reported earlier, an old friend who had lost contact with the suspect years ago told CNN he frequented the dance hall in Monterey Park but believed the instructors didn't like him. The friend added he was "hostile to a lot of people there".
Investigators now believe that the gunman may have specifically targeted some of his victims, while others were randomly slain during his rampage, the law enforcement official told the Times.
WATCH: 'The Chinese community here is hurting and in pain'
Members of the Chinese community and civic and political leaders have been speaking about their shock and disbelief about the shootings.
There will be a vigil for the victims on Monday evening at City Hall in Monterey Park, which is home to one of the largest Asian American communities in the US.
Video content
Video caption: People speak about their shock, as they come together following the mass shootingPeople speak about their shock, as they come together following the mass shooting
'Our biggest cheerleader' - Family pays tribute to victim
Tiffany Liou, a Taiwanese-American reporter based in Texas, has said that one of the victims identified on Monday was her husband's aunt: My Nhan.
"I've covered a lot of tragedies, and never imagined one would hit so close to home," Liou wrote on Twitter.
"Mymy treated her nieces/nephews like her own kids. Her kindness is what’s needed in this world," she wrote in a follow-up post.
The local community in the Asian-majority city of Monterey Park will be holding vigils and memorials over the coming hours and days.
Monterey Park Mayor Henry Lo said "the unimaginable happened in our community last evening".
"We stand united together as we mourn, and our thoughts are with all the victims and their families and friends during this difficult time."
People are encouraged to bring flowers or candles to Monterey Park’s City Hall on Newmark Avenue, for a vigil at 19:00 local time.
“We don’t want this to be normal and we don’t want this to be acceptable,” Ann Lau, a community member who helped organise the vigil, told local media.
America's gun problem in graphs
Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life.
There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 - that's higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.
In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010.
But the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against sectors of the population fiercely protective of their constitutionally-enshrined right to bear arms.
How many guns are there in the US?
While calculating the number of guns in private hands around the world is difficult, figures from the Small Arms Survey - a Swiss-based leading research project - estimate that there were 390 million guns in circulation in 2018.
BBCCopyright: BBC
How do US gun killings compare with other countries?
In 2020, 43% of the deaths - amounting to 19,384 people - were homicides, according to data from the CDC.
The figure represents a 34% increase from 2019, and a 75% increase over the course of the previous decade.
Nearly 53 people are killed each day by a firearm in the US, according to the data.
BBCCopyright: BBC
Gunman far older than most mass shooters
Little is still known about the gunman behind the Monterey Park mass shooting.
But one thing that makes him stand out from other recent mass killers is his age. Huu Can Tran was 72.
The average age of gunmen in mass shootings in the US over the past 60 years is 32, according to the Violence Project, a research centre funded by the National Institute of Justice.
There has only been one other mass shooter since 2020 over the age of 70, it says.
Only four of the 189 mass shooters in its database are women, two of whom partnered with a male gunman.
While the US does not have a single definition for "mass shootings", the Violence Project focus on mass public shootings, defined by the Congressional Research Service.
It defines a mass shooting as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms - not including the offender - within one event, and at least some of the murders occurred in a public location or locations in close geographical proximity".
"The murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance," it says, citing, for example, armed robbery, criminal competition or insurance fraud.
In pictures: A community in mourning
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
Community members gathered for a vigil in downtown Monterey Park on SundayImage caption: Community members gathered for a vigil in downtown Monterey Park on Sunday
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
A woman wipes away tears as she prays at the vigilImage caption: A woman wipes away tears as she prays at the vigil
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
A woman lays flowers at the entrance to the dance studioImage caption: A woman lays flowers at the entrance to the dance studio
ReutersCopyright: Reuters
A young girl in her Chinese New Year outfit looks on at law enforcementImage caption: A young girl in her Chinese New Year outfit looks on at law enforcement
ReutersCopyright: Reuters
A man holds flowers as he stands near the crime sceneImage caption: A man holds flowers as he stands near the crime scene
BreakingTwo victims of shooting named
The names of two of the 10 victims of the shooting have been announced by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office.
The victims identified are My Nhan, a 65-year-old woman, and Lilan Li, a 63-year-old woman.
The names of the other eight victims are yet to be released.
BreakingTran was a regular patron at the dance studio, ex-wife says
Little is known about the gunman behind the Monterey Park mass shooting and why he went on a rampage Saturday night.
Police identified him on Sunday as Huu Can Tran, 72.
According to documents seen by CNN, Tran was an immigrant from China and worked as a truck driver for some period of time.
For more than two decades, he reportedly owned a home in the San Gabriel Valley, where Monterey Park is located, but sold it in 2013 and bought a mobile home in Hemet, about 85 miles (137 km) east of Los Angeles.
His ex-wife, who did not identify herself, told CNN that Tran was a regular at the Star Dance Studio he attacked on Saturday. She added they had met there about two decades ago. She described him as quick to anger but not violent. Tran filed for a divorce in 2005, which was formalised the next year.
A long-time friend of Tran who lost contact with him several years ago told CNN that he came to the dance hall - which was a five-minute drive from his San Gabriel home - "almost every night" in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
He said Tran was "hostile to a lot of people there" and believed the instructors didn't like him and said "evil things about him".
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
What we know about the weapon
As investigators delve into the gunman's history in search of a motive, questions also remain about the weapon he used.
The firearm was initially believed to be an assault weapon similar to the ones used in previous mass shootings, but Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna later said it was a semi-automatic pistol with an extended large-capacity magazine attached to it.
Luna added that he did not think that kind of weapon was legal in California but would need to further investigate.
When Swat officers inspected the van the suspect was found dead inside and they also found a handgun.
“California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but yet, look at what we just had today,” Sheriff Luna said on Sunday. “The status quo is not working.”
Watch his full statement on gun laws below.
Video content
Video caption: LA police chief calls for reform of gun lawsLA police chief calls for reform of gun laws
'No one dared to flee' - eye witnesses describe shooting
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
The interior of the dance studio, seen through a windowImage caption: The interior of the dance studio, seen through a window
Eyewitness accounts from inside the scene of the Monterey Park rampage have begun to emerge.
A woman identified as Grace told the New York Times that she had been practising her steps to a Chinese dance known as guangchang wu when the gunman entered the dance hall.
“No one dared to flee - we all got down to the ground, hiding wherever we could,” she said.
Grace, who said she was in a back corner of the hall, claims she survived because she dived under a table, but said she had seen several people collapse to the ground in front of her.
Another witness in the building, Shally, told ABC7 Los Angeles that she had been dancing with her long-time dance partner when the gunman entered and opened fire.
She claims they hid under a table as well, but her 62-year-old friend was shot in the back, incidentally shielding her from the bullet, and she was unable to wake him up. It is unclear if he survived.
California leaders lament tragedy in Monterey Park
The political leadership of the state of California expressed condolences on Sunday as the full extent of the violence became clear.
"A time of cultural celebration and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence," said Vice-President Kamala Harris who represented California in the US Senate.
Shock and sorrow in an Asian-American haven
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
A community member prays at a vigil on SundayImage caption: A community member prays at a vigil on Sunday
Monterey Park is home to about 60,000 people, two-thirds of whom are of Asian descent. It has been called America's first "Chinese suburb".
Tens of thousands flock to its downtown area around this time of year for Lunar New Year celebrations that are among the biggest in the state.
Residents have spoken of their bewilderment over the Saturday night incident.
Wong Wei told the Los Angeles Times that his friend was at the dance hall but had been in the bathroom when the shooting began.
He said that when she came out, she saw the gunman firing indiscriminately from a long gun, and she also saw three people lying dead, including a manager. She escaped to Wei's nearby home, he said.
The mass shooting in Monterey Park was one of the deadliest in California's history.
It began at around 22:22 local time on Saturday (06:22 GMT on Sunday) at the popular Star Ballroom Dance Studio in downtown Monterey Park, about seven miles (11km) east of central Los Angeles.
All victims - 10 dead and 10 others injured - were reported here.
About 30 minutes later, the gunman entered another dance studio in the adjacent town of Alhambra.
He was disarmed before he could shoot anybody and no injuries were reported.
On Sunday, about 12 hours later, a Swat team swarmed a van holding the suspect in a car park in the city of Torrance, about 30 miles (48km) from the Monterey Park crime scene.
He was then pronounced dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
BBCCopyright: BBC
Man who disarmed gunman identified
Getty ImagesCopyright: Getty Images
Lai Lai Ballroom & Dance Studio in neighbouring AlhambraImage caption: Lai Lai Ballroom & Dance Studio in neighbouring Alhambra
Police in Monterey Park said they believed the gunman was disarmed by two civilians at the second dance studio he targeted, in the neighbouring city of Alhambra.
But in an overnight interview with the New York Times, Brandon Tsay - who helps run Lai Lai Ballroom & Dance Studio - said it was he alone who wrestled the attacker's firearm away.
Tsay, 26, said he was in the office near the lobby and had turned around to see the gunman's semi-automatic assault pistol pointed at him.
“He was looking at me and looking around, not hiding that he was trying to do harm. His eyes were menacing,” Tsay told the Times.
“From his body language, his facial expression, his eyes, he was looking for people.”
A computer coder who often works in the ticket office at the business, Tsay told ABC News "something came over me" and they struggled for control of the weapon for nearly two minutes before he managed to prise it away.
The story so far
If you're catching up on this news, here is a quick recap of what we know:
A gunman shot 10 people - five men and five women - dead at a popular dance studio in downtown Monterey Park, California
Ten others were wounded in the shooting, with seven reportedly still in hospital and some critical
Police have identified the lone suspect as Huu Can Tran, a 72-year-old man of Asian descent
His motive for the attack is not yet known
Thousands of people had earlier gathered in the city, which is about 65% Asian American, to participate in Lunar New Year festivities
Roughly half an hour after his first attack, Tran entered another dance studio in neighbouring Alhambra, but his firearm was wrestled away from him before he could shoot anybody and he fled the scene
About 12 hours later police swarmed a white van in Torrance, about 30 miles from the crime scene
A single shot was heard from inside the van as police approached, and the suspect was declared dead at the scene
Welcome back
Thank you for joining us as the US wakes up to the aftermath of another mass shooting, the deadliest since the Uvalde school attack in Texas last May.
Ten people have been killed at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California.
The Saturday night shooting, which left 10 others injured, took place as thousands of people had earlier gathered in the city, which sits just east of Los Angeles, to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Follow this page for all the latest updates throughout the day.
Bye for now
Thanks for joining us. We are now pausing our live coverage of the shooting in California which left 10 people dead. Read the latest on the story here.
The page was brought to you by Samuel Horti, Gareth Evans, Tiffany Wertheimer,
Marianna Brady, Holly Honderich, George Bowden, Kathryn Armstrong, Charlene
Rodrigues, Sam Cabral, Rebecca Seales, Laurence Peter, Grace Tsoi, Tiffanie Turnbull,
Thomas Spender, Jay Savage and Isabelle Rodd.
Timeline - what we know so far
ReutersCopyright: Reuters
Locals have begun leaving flowers near the scene of the shootingImage caption: Locals have begun leaving flowers near the scene of the shooting
Saturday:
22:22pm: A gunman opens fire at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park. Emergency services soon receive calls for help. They find 10 people dead and at least 10 people injured.
22:50: The gunman enters a second studio - the Lai Lai Ballroom in Alhambra - which is about a 10 minute drive away. He is disarmed by two people, who wrestle a semi-automatic pistol off him before he flees the scene.
Police launch manhunt for the suspect.
Sunday:
The LA Sheriff's department releases a photo of the suspect, warning he is considered armed and dangerous. They also say a white van is "of interest" in the case.
10:20: Police locate a white van in Torrance - about 40 minutes from where the suspect was last seen. As they approach, they hear a single gunshot, and call for backup. A SWAT team surrounds the van.
12:52: Police enter the van, finding the suspect - later identified as Huu Can Tran, 72 - dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
17.20: LA County Sheriff Robert Luna says a motive for the shooting remains unclear. He adds that the 10 people who died are still being identified but their ages are "probably in their 50s, 60s" or older, and that seven injured people remain in hospital.
Live Reporting
Edited by Jessica Murphy
All times stated are UK
Get involved
Gunman may have targeted some victims, randomly killed others - report
A law enforcement official has told the New York Times that the suspected gunman had recently visited his local police station to report that his family was poisoning him.
The attacker reportedly lived in a mobile home in a gated retirement community in the city of Hemet, about 85 miles (137 km) east of Los Angeles.
As we reported earlier, an old friend who had lost contact with the suspect years ago told CNN he frequented the dance hall in Monterey Park but believed the instructors didn't like him. The friend added he was "hostile to a lot of people there".
Investigators now believe that the gunman may have specifically targeted some of his victims, while others were randomly slain during his rampage, the law enforcement official told the Times.
WATCH: 'The Chinese community here is hurting and in pain'
Members of the Chinese community and civic and political leaders have been speaking about their shock and disbelief about the shootings.
There will be a vigil for the victims on Monday evening at City Hall in Monterey Park, which is home to one of the largest Asian American communities in the US.
Video content
'Our biggest cheerleader' - Family pays tribute to victim
Tiffany Liou, a Taiwanese-American reporter based in Texas, has said that one of the victims identified on Monday was her husband's aunt: My Nhan.
"I've covered a lot of tragedies, and never imagined one would hit so close to home," Liou wrote on Twitter.
"Mymy treated her nieces/nephews like her own kids. Her kindness is what’s needed in this world," she wrote in a follow-up post.
Read the family's full statement below:
Hero who disarmed gunman had never seen a real gun
The 26-year-old man credited with disarming the California shooting suspect had never seen a real gun before.
Late on Saturday evening, working at his family-run dance hall in Alhambra, Brandon Tsay found himself staring at one pointed directly at him.
"My heart sank, I knew I was going to die," Tsay told the New York Times.
He did not know the gunman was believed to have killed 10 people just minutes earlier at another dance hall.
Tsay lunged at the man and eventually disarmed him, averting another tragedy.
The gunman, identified as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, later died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in a van, according to police.
Read in full here.
Vigils after 'unimaginable' horrors
The local community in the Asian-majority city of Monterey Park will be holding vigils and memorials over the coming hours and days.
Monterey Park Mayor Henry Lo said "the unimaginable happened in our community last evening".
"We stand united together as we mourn, and our thoughts are with all the victims and their families and friends during this difficult time."
People are encouraged to bring flowers or candles to Monterey Park’s City Hall on Newmark Avenue, for a vigil at 19:00 local time.
“We don’t want this to be normal and we don’t want this to be acceptable,” Ann Lau, a community member who helped organise the vigil, told local media.
America's gun problem in graphs
Firearms deaths are a fixture in American life.
There were 1.5 million of them between 1968 and 2017 - that's higher than the number of soldiers killed in every US conflict since the American War for Independence in 1775.
In 2020 alone, more than 45,000 Americans died at the end of a barrel of a gun, whether by homicide or suicide, more than any other year on record. The figure represents a 25% increase from five years prior, and a 43% increase from 2010.
But the issue is a highly political one, pitting gun control advocates against sectors of the population fiercely protective of their constitutionally-enshrined right to bear arms.
How many guns are there in the US?
While calculating the number of guns in private hands around the world is difficult, figures from the Small Arms Survey - a Swiss-based leading research project - estimate that there were 390 million guns in circulation in 2018.
How do US gun killings compare with other countries?
In 2020, 43% of the deaths - amounting to 19,384 people - were homicides, according to data from the CDC.
The figure represents a 34% increase from 2019, and a 75% increase over the course of the previous decade. Nearly 53 people are killed each day by a firearm in the US, according to the data.
Gunman far older than most mass shooters
Little is still known about the gunman behind the Monterey Park mass shooting.
But one thing that makes him stand out from other recent mass killers is his age. Huu Can Tran was 72.
The average age of gunmen in mass shootings in the US over the past 60 years is 32, according to the Violence Project, a research centre funded by the National Institute of Justice.
There has only been one other mass shooter since 2020 over the age of 70, it says.
Only four of the 189 mass shooters in its database are women, two of whom partnered with a male gunman.
While the US does not have a single definition for "mass shootings", the Violence Project focus on mass public shootings, defined by the Congressional Research Service.
It defines a mass shooting as “a multiple homicide incident in which four or more victims are murdered with firearms - not including the offender - within one event, and at least some of the murders occurred in a public location or locations in close geographical proximity".
"The murders are not attributable to any other underlying criminal activity or commonplace circumstance," it says, citing, for example, armed robbery, criminal competition or insurance fraud.
In pictures: A community in mourning
BreakingTwo victims of shooting named
The names of two of the 10 victims of the shooting have been announced by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s office.
The victims identified are My Nhan, a 65-year-old woman, and Lilan Li, a 63-year-old woman.
The names of the other eight victims are yet to be released.
BreakingTran was a regular patron at the dance studio, ex-wife says
Little is known about the gunman behind the Monterey Park mass shooting and why he went on a rampage Saturday night.
Police identified him on Sunday as Huu Can Tran, 72.
According to documents seen by CNN, Tran was an immigrant from China and worked as a truck driver for some period of time.
For more than two decades, he reportedly owned a home in the San Gabriel Valley, where Monterey Park is located, but sold it in 2013 and bought a mobile home in Hemet, about 85 miles (137 km) east of Los Angeles.
His ex-wife, who did not identify herself, told CNN that Tran was a regular at the Star Dance Studio he attacked on Saturday. She added they had met there about two decades ago. She described him as quick to anger but not violent. Tran filed for a divorce in 2005, which was formalised the next year.
A long-time friend of Tran who lost contact with him several years ago told CNN that he came to the dance hall - which was a five-minute drive from his San Gabriel home - "almost every night" in the late 2000s and early 2010s.
He said Tran was "hostile to a lot of people there" and believed the instructors didn't like him and said "evil things about him".
What we know about the weapon
As investigators delve into the gunman's history in search of a motive, questions also remain about the weapon he used.
The firearm was initially believed to be an assault weapon similar to the ones used in previous mass shootings, but Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna later said it was a semi-automatic pistol with an extended large-capacity magazine attached to it.
Luna added that he did not think that kind of weapon was legal in California but would need to further investigate.
When Swat officers inspected the van the suspect was found dead inside and they also found a handgun.
“California has some of the strictest gun laws in the country, but yet, look at what we just had today,” Sheriff Luna said on Sunday. “The status quo is not working.”
Watch his full statement on gun laws below.
Video content
'No one dared to flee' - eye witnesses describe shooting
Eyewitness accounts from inside the scene of the Monterey Park rampage have begun to emerge.
A woman identified as Grace told the New York Times that she had been practising her steps to a Chinese dance known as guangchang wu when the gunman entered the dance hall.
“No one dared to flee - we all got down to the ground, hiding wherever we could,” she said.
Grace, who said she was in a back corner of the hall, claims she survived because she dived under a table, but said she had seen several people collapse to the ground in front of her.
Another witness in the building, Shally, told ABC7 Los Angeles that she had been dancing with her long-time dance partner when the gunman entered and opened fire.
She claims they hid under a table as well, but her 62-year-old friend was shot in the back, incidentally shielding her from the bullet, and she was unable to wake him up. It is unclear if he survived.
California leaders lament tragedy in Monterey Park
The political leadership of the state of California expressed condolences on Sunday as the full extent of the violence became clear.
"A time of cultural celebration and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence," said Vice-President Kamala Harris who represented California in the US Senate.
Shock and sorrow in an Asian-American haven
Monterey Park is home to about 60,000 people, two-thirds of whom are of Asian descent. It has been called America's first "Chinese suburb".
Tens of thousands flock to its downtown area around this time of year for Lunar New Year celebrations that are among the biggest in the state.
Residents have spoken of their bewilderment over the Saturday night incident.
Wong Wei told the Los Angeles Times that his friend was at the dance hall but had been in the bathroom when the shooting began.
He said that when she came out, she saw the gunman firing indiscriminately from a long gun, and she also saw three people lying dead, including a manager. She escaped to Wei's nearby home, he said.
Read more.
How the attack unfolded
The mass shooting in Monterey Park was one of the deadliest in California's history.
It began at around 22:22 local time on Saturday (06:22 GMT on Sunday) at the popular Star Ballroom Dance Studio in downtown Monterey Park, about seven miles (11km) east of central Los Angeles.
All victims - 10 dead and 10 others injured - were reported here.
About 30 minutes later, the gunman entered another dance studio in the adjacent town of Alhambra.
He was disarmed before he could shoot anybody and no injuries were reported.
On Sunday, about 12 hours later, a Swat team swarmed a van holding the suspect in a car park in the city of Torrance, about 30 miles (48km) from the Monterey Park crime scene.
He was then pronounced dead from a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Man who disarmed gunman identified
Police in Monterey Park said they believed the gunman was disarmed by two civilians at the second dance studio he targeted, in the neighbouring city of Alhambra.
But in an overnight interview with the New York Times, Brandon Tsay - who helps run Lai Lai Ballroom & Dance Studio - said it was he alone who wrestled the attacker's firearm away.
Tsay, 26, said he was in the office near the lobby and had turned around to see the gunman's semi-automatic assault pistol pointed at him.
“He was looking at me and looking around, not hiding that he was trying to do harm. His eyes were menacing,” Tsay told the Times.
“From his body language, his facial expression, his eyes, he was looking for people.”
A computer coder who often works in the ticket office at the business, Tsay told ABC News "something came over me" and they struggled for control of the weapon for nearly two minutes before he managed to prise it away.
The story so far
If you're catching up on this news, here is a quick recap of what we know:
Welcome back
Thank you for joining us as the US wakes up to the aftermath of another mass shooting, the deadliest since the Uvalde school attack in Texas last May.
Ten people have been killed at a dance studio in Monterey Park, California.
The Saturday night shooting, which left 10 others injured, took place as thousands of people had earlier gathered in the city, which sits just east of Los Angeles, to celebrate the Lunar New Year.
Follow this page for all the latest updates throughout the day.
Bye for now
Thanks for joining us. We are now pausing our live coverage of the shooting in California which left 10 people dead. Read the latest on the story here.
The page was brought to you by Samuel Horti, Gareth Evans, Tiffany Wertheimer, Marianna Brady, Holly Honderich, George Bowden, Kathryn Armstrong, Charlene Rodrigues, Sam Cabral, Rebecca Seales, Laurence Peter, Grace Tsoi, Tiffanie Turnbull, Thomas Spender, Jay Savage and Isabelle Rodd.
Timeline - what we know so far
Saturday:
Sunday: