Monterey Park (US): The hunt for a gunman who killed 10 people at a ballroom dance club during Lunar New Year celebrations ended Sunday when authorities found him dead of a self-inflicted gunshot wound in the van he used to flee after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting.
Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna identified the man as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran and said no other suspects were at large.
Speaking at an evening news conference, he added that the motive remained unclear for the attack, which wounded 10 more.
Luna did not have the exact ages of the victims but said they all appeared to be over 50.
Seven of the wounded people remained in the hospital, he said.
The sheriff added that the suspect was carrying what he described as a semi-automatic pistol with an extended magazine, and a second handgun was discovered in the van where Tran was found dead.
Luna previously released photos of an Asian man who was believed to be the suspect.
Hours later, Luna said authorities were looking for a white van after witnesses reported seeing the suspect flee from Alhambra in such a vehicle.
The van was found in Torrance, another community home to many Asian Americans, about 22 miles (34.5 kilometers) from the first location.
Earlier Sunday, law enforcement officials swarmed and entered the van after surrounding it for hours before going in.
A person’s body appeared to be slumped over the wheel and was later removed from the vehicle.
Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese said Sunday evening that within three minutes of receiving the call, officers arrived on the scene.
There, they found extensive carnage inside and people trying to flee through all the doors.
“When they came into the parking lot it, was chaos,” Wiese said.
About 20 to 30 minutes after the first attack, the gunman entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra. But people wrested the weapon away from him before he fled, according to Luna.
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 first-generation Asian Americans.
The celebration in Monterey Park is one of California’s largest. Two days of festivities, which have been attended by as many as 100,000 people in past years, were planned. But officials canceled Sunday’s events following the shooting.
President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were briefed on the situation, aides said. Biden said he and first lady Jill Biden were thinking of those killed and wounded, and he directed federal authorities to support the investigation.
An Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S. Shows that 2022 was one of the nation’s worst years with 42 such attacks — the second-highest number since the creation of the tracker in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four people killed, not including the perpetrator.
The massacre was the nation’s fifth mass killing this month. It was also the deadliest attack since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
In addition to that, the latest violence comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.
AP