Death toll of Lunar New Year mass shooting rises to 11

Jealousy may have been behind a mass shooting in California which has claimed 11 lives, as CCTV footage captured a civilian’s heroic effort. Watch video.

The death toll from a mass shooting in California on Lunar New Year has risen to 11 as detectives investigate whether jealousy or a personal dispute was behind the tragedy.

Huu Can Tran, 72, used a semi-automatic pistol in a rampage in the Los Angeles suburb of Monterey Park on Saturday night, killing men and women in their 50s, 60s and 70s. One person was shot in the parking lot.

He then drove to another dance studio where police say only the “heroic” actions of a young man who wrestled the weapon off him prevented another slaughter.

Hours later, Tran shot himself dead as police moved in on his white van.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said that Tran, who had been arrested in 1994 for unlawful possession of a firearm, had fired 42 rounds in the attack.

But, he said, much was still unknown.

“We still don’t have a motive, but we want to know the motive behind this tragic event,” he told reporters.

“What drove a madman to do this? We don’t know. But we intend to find out.”

Detectives were looking at Tran’s previous connections to the two dance studios, with personal relationships a key area of interest, the Los Angeles Times reported.

Monterey Park resident Chester Hong told AFP he believed a domestic dispute over an invitation to a Lunar New Year eve party could be at the root of the attack.

“The wife (was) invited to join the party (but) the husband cannot be invited,” he said.

“And the husband may be upset and jealous.”

Luna confirmed officers had been told Tran may have been known to some of his victims, but said there was currently no evidence he was related to any.

MOMENT HERO CIVILIAN TACKLES GUNMAN

Astonishing surveillance images show the moment a brave civilian tackled the gunman.

Brandon Tsay, 26, can be seen brawling with Tran, as the armed male burst into the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio after earlier opening fire at a nearby dance hall in Monterey Park.

The computer coder told Good Morning America that he thought nothing of hearing the ballroom door closing until it was “instantly followed by the sound of a metal object clinking together.”

Hero civilian Brandon Tsay, 26.

“That’s when I turned around and saw that there was an Asian man holding a gun,” Tsay said of the terrifying scene in his family’s ballroom.

“My first thought was I was gonna die here. This was it,” he said.

Tsay said it was immediately clear that the gunman “wasn’t here to rob us.”

“When he was looking around the room, it seemed like he was looking for targets. People to harm,” he said, recalling how the alleged mass shooter then “started prepping his weapon.”

He also told the New York Times that the man’s “eyes were menacing.”

Tsay wrestles with the armed male.

“Something came over me, I realised I needed to get the weapon away from him,” he told the morning show, which shared surveillance images of his heroic fight that authorities say “saved lives.”

Tsay said he knew he “needed to take this weapon [and] disarm him or else everybody would have died,” he said.

“When I got the courage, I lunged at him with both my hands, grabbed the weapon and we had a struggle” to get control of the gun, he said.

Tsay was able to get the weapon from the suspect.

“He was hitting me across the face, especially in the back of my head. I was trying to use my elbows to separate the gun away from him, create some distance,” he recalled.

“Finally at one point I was able to pull the gun away from him,” Tsay said.

“That moment, it was primal instinct,” he told the Times.

“I don’t know what came over me.”

He then managed to “point the gun at him” and shouted: “Get the hell out of here! I’ll shoot! Get away! Go!”

The Asian suspect in the mass shooting in California. Picture: Supplied

US President Joe Biden has ordered all US flags to be lowered to half-mast until Thursday, in honour of the victims.

“While there is still much we don’t know about the motive in this senseless attack, we do know that many families are grieving tonight, or praying that their loved one will recover from their wounds,” Mr Biden said in a statement.

The Lai Lai Ballroom and Studio near the site of a deadly shooting in Monterey Park. Picture: Getty Images via AFP

SUSPECT A PATRON, OFFERED DANCE LESSONS

A picture has begun to emerge of the gunman who, according to his marriage license, had immigrated from China, and who had been a regular at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in the past.

Tran’s ex-wife told CNN the couple had met there two decades ago when he offered to give her informal lessons.

The woman, who did not want to be named, said they married a short time later, but the relationship did not last, with the divorce finalised in 2006.

She said Tran, who sometimes worked as a truck driver, was not violent, but could be impatient.

A man who said he had previously known Tran said he would complain about dance teachers, who, he claimed, would say “evil things about him”, CNN reported.

He was “hostile to a lot of people there,” the man told the broadcaster.

Detectives who searched a mobile home where Tran had been living in Hemet, 140km east of Los Angeles, recovered a rifle, electronics and ammunition, Luna said.

Police in the city said earlier this month Tran had made “fraud, theft, and poisoning allegations involving his family in the Los Angeles area 10 to 20 years ago.

POLICE IN STAND-OFF WITH SUSPECT

Police were involved in a stand-off with the suspect on Sunday with aerial footage showing a white transit van hemmed in by armoured police vehicles, while a large number of police cars stood nearby.

Just before 1pm local time, a SWAT team swarmed the vehicle and smashed its windows in the parking lot of Tokyo Central, a Japanese grocery store, The Los Angeles Times reports. Two bullet holes appeared to have pierced the glass of the drivers-side window and the driver appeared to be slumped over the steering wheel.

The suspect in a mass shooting in Monterey Park appears slumped over in a van. Picture: Jay L. Clendenin / Los Angeles Times via Getty Images

Multiple police sources told The Times that the driver had died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound.

The development came after Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department released photographs from surveillance cameras of an older Asian man wearing a beanie hat and glasses.

The gunman opened fire as thousands in the local community had been celebrating Lunar New Year, with witnesses saying he shot indiscriminately with a semiautomatic weapon.

Police open the door of a van outside the site in Torrance, California, where the alleged suspect in the mass shooting is believed to be holed up. Picture: AFP

FIRST VICTIMS OF LUNAR NEW YEAR MASSACRE NAMED

The Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office on Monday released the names of two of the people killed in the shooting.

Eight victims ranging in age from 50s to 70s have yet to be identified.

The identified victims were My Nhan, a 65-year-old woman, and Lilan Li, a 63-year-old woman.

Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna said on Sunday that five women and five men died at the scene of the shooting Saturday night, on the eve of Lunar New Year.

Dance Star Studio, the scene of the massacre, posted on their Facebook page:

“Dear Star Dance Community, Thank you for your prayers and thoughts during this difficult time. What should have been a festive night to welcome the first day of the Lunar New Year turned into a tragedy. Our heart goes out to all the victims, survivors, and their families. In this time of healing, we hope that all those who were affected have the space to grieve and process what transpired within the last 24 hours. In the meantime, all classes will be cancelled and studio will be closed until further notice.”

Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people in the Los Angeles area.

“Our hearts go out to those who lost loved ones tonight in our neighbouring city, Monterey Park, where a mass shooting just occurred,” Los Angeles City Controller Kenneth Mejia said in a tweet.

The LA Times reported that tens of thousands of people had gathered earlier in the day for the two-day festival, which is one of the largest in southern California.

Local resident Wong Wei told the Los Angeles Times his friend had been at the dance club, and had been in the bathroom when the shooting erupted.

When she emerged, she saw a man carrying a long gun and firing indiscriminately, as well as the bodies of three people, two of them women and one person who he said was the boss of the club.

Police on the scene in Monterey Park, California, where police are responding to reports of multiple people shot. Picture: AFP

The paper reported that Seung Won Choi, who owns a seafood barbecue restaurant near the scene said three people had run into his restaurant and told him to lock the door.

The three said there was a man with a semiautomatic gun who had multiple rounds of ammunition on him, and would reload every time he ran out, Mr Choi told the paper.

Ten people have died and at least 10 others have been wounded in a mass shooting in a largely Asian city in southern California, police said, with the suspect still at large hours later. Picture: AFP

Gun violence is a huge problem in the United States, which saw a record 647 mass shootings last year, according to the Gun Violence Archive website, defined as an incident with four or more people shot or killed, not including the shooter.

More than 44,000 people died from gunshot wounds in 2022, more than half of which were suicides.

The country has more weapons than people: one in three adults owns at least one weapon and nearly one in two adults lives in a home where there is a weapon.

If you are in immediate danger, please call 000 in an emergency.

For more support, please call:

24-hour helpline 1800 RESPECT on 1800 737 732

Men facing domestic violence can contact mensline.org.au on 1300 78 99 78

Kids Helpline is for young people aged 5 to 25 on 1800 551 800

Lifeline on 13 11 14

– with AFP