Huu Can Tran, 72, was discovered dead inside a van, ending the search for the suspect in the California mass shooting that left 10 people dead and at least 10 others injured. According to police, he apparently shot himself.
The 72-year-old opened fire on a Chinese Lunar New Year celebration in Los Angeles’ Monterey Park yesterday. After discovering him in the van, police surrounded it. The officers heard a gunshot as they drew near the car.
As per Los Angeles County Sheriff, Robert Luna, the man died from a self-inflicted wound. While it puts an end to a manhunt for the only suspect in California Mass Shooting, the investigation would go on as the motive of the shooter remains unknown.
According to officials, detectives are reviewing surveillance videos and do not yet know whether the accused was targeting a specific group. Sheriff Luna previously stated that the police do not yet know if this is a hate crime as defined by law, but no one walks into a dance hall and shoots down 20 people.
Image – CNN
According to a statement from the White House, US President Joe Biden has ordered that all US flags at government buildings fly at half-staff in honour of the victims of the California mass shooting. For the two-day Lunar New Year festival, one of the biggest in southern California, tens of thousands of people had gathered. Following the attack, the festival’s second day was cancelled.
California Mass Shooting: What Initially Happened
For the residents of Monterey Park, a largely Asian American suburb of Los Angeles where a mass shooting left 10 people dead, the “Year of the Rabbit” began in horror on Sunday.
Red lanterns and banners with Chinese characters commemorating the Lunar New Year were still fluttering over a road in this 60,000-person city. Yellow police tape and heavily armed police officers, however, replaced any indication of celebrations in the area of the dance hall where the California mass shooting took place.
Authorities reported that a shooter entered the ballroom on Saturday night and killed five men and five women while also injuring at least ten others.
In a statement broadcast by CNN, Meyer claimed that the Monterey Park Police Fire Department had responded to the scene, attended to the injured, and declared 10 of the victims dead there at the California Mass shooting. At least ten more people were injured, and they were taken to several local hospitals where they are listed in a range of conditions, from stable to critical.
The accused escaped the scene and managed to remain at large, the official added. Reporters were also informed that the Monterey Park Lunar New Year Festival had been postponed out of an abundance of caution and respect for the victims by Chief Scott Wiese of the Monterey Park Police Department.
Liaw, a retired veterinarian who is 57 years old, has lived in Monterey Park for the previous 40 years. She still had a hard time accepting that a massacre took place at the California Mass Shooting, hidden from view behind the white and green awning of the shop she passes every day on her way to shop.
She told AFP as police helicopters whirred overhead, it was a very safe neighbourhood where she could walk alone at night and didn’t have to worry about gun violence.
California Mass Shooting: The Story So Far
Authorities surrounded and broke into a white van Sunday afternoon that they believe was being driven by the shooter who opened fire on a Southern California ballroom dance studio, killing 10 people and injuring another 10.
Before entering the van, police spent hours encircling it with bomb squad trucks and tactical vehicles on the California Mass Shooting. Authorities did not immediately identify the person whose body was found slumped over the steering wheel but was later removed from the car. The suspect had apparently shot himself.
Earlier, Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna released images of an Asian man who was thought to be the suspect but withheld the man’s identity.
A man carrying a gun entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra 20 to 30 minutes after that. The two incidents, according to authorities, are related. They made no mention of a potential reason.
According to Luna, the suspect brought a gun into the Alhambra club and was confronted by clubgoers who took the gun from him before he fled. Hours earlier, Luna reported that investigators were searching for a white van after witnesses claimed to have seen the suspect fleeing from Alhambra in one.
A short while later, members of a SWAT team entered the van and began to search through its contents before leaving. What they discovered was ambiguous.
The type of gun found in Alhambra was not disclosed. According to the investigators, the weapon used in Monterey Park was not an assault rifle.
California Mass Shooting: Another Gun Violence in the US
This was the fifth mass murder in the nation this month. Additionally, it was the deadliest assault since May 24, when 21 people were killed in an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
According to an Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings, 42 such attacks occurred in 2022, one of the worst years for the country since the tracker’s inception in 2006. The database defines a mass killing as four victims in total, excluding the perpetrator.
There was more violence two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.
President Joe Biden and Attorney General Merrick Garland were informed of the situation, according to aides. In addition to directing federal authorities to assist with the investigation, Biden stated that he and first lady Jill Biden were thinking of those killed and injured.
