Monterey Park Mass Shooter Killed Himself As Police Closed In

MONTEREY PARK, CA — Police on Sunday found the body of the suspected Monterey Park mass shooter who killed 10 people and injured 10 others at a dance hall following a Lunar New Year celebration Saturday night, according to Los Angeles County Sheriff Robert Luna.

Moments after the deadly shooting, the killer attempted to enter a nearby dance hall in Alhambra, where he was disarmed by two bystanders being hailed as heroes. He fled in a white cargo van, prompting a massive manhunt spanning Los Angeles County Sunday.

After an hourslong search for the killer, authorities said there is no longer a threat to the community. The shooter has been identified as 72-year-old Huu Can Tran, of Hemet, said Luna. Late Sunday night, authorities raided his home in a mobile home park for seniors.

Nearly 12 hours after the mass shooting, police officers in Torrance pulled up behind the suspect's van at about 10:20 a.m. in the area of Hawthorne and Sepulveda boulevards. He drove into the parking lot of a shopping center, and as officers exited their vehicle, they heard a gunshot coming from inside the van, Luna said. A few hours later, SWAT Team officers breached the van and found Tran's body slumped over in the driver's seat.

“At 12:52 p.m. our sheriff’s SWAT Team approached and cleared the van and determined the suspect sustained a self-inflicted gunshot wound and was pronounced dead at the scene," Luna said. “Investigators conducted a search of the vehicle and determined the male inside the van was the mass shooting suspect. During the search, several pieces of evidence were found inside the van linking the suspect to both locations in Monterey Park and Alhambra. In addition, a handgun was discovered inside the van.”

Footage from the scene by ABC7 showed detectives placing an automatic weapon into an evidence box.

Luna said detectives are still trying to determine a motive for the shooting. One witness, however, told KCAL News that the shooter came to the dance hall looking for his wife.

"We still are not clear on the motive," Luna said. "We want to know. We want to know how something this awful can happen."

As of Sunday night, seven victims remained hospitalized, including one in critical condition. Authorities had not yet publicly released their identities. Luna credited Monterey Park Fire Department paramedics for saving their lives, and he thanked a massive coalition of city, county, and federal law enforcement agencies for help with the manhunt.

"We did this together. We really did. When there is tragedy, we have to lean on each other, and that’s what we did," said Luna. "When I got here and I saw...the look in the eyes of the homicide investigators and all of their staff, you could just tell: they were going to get this guy."

Luna also hailed the bystanders who stopped the killer at the Alhambra dance hall as heroes.

"He was disarmed by two community members, who I consider to be heroes because they saved lives. This could have been much worse," Luna said.

According to Monterey Park Police Chief Scott Wiese, officers responded to the scene of the shooting within 3 minutes of the first 911 call. The first officers on the scene were rookies, who had been on patrol for only a few months, he said at a press conference Sunday. They saw things that no officer could ever be prepared for, he added.

The officers cleared the scene to make sure there was no active shooter and began treating victims, Wiese said.

The investigation continued well into the evening Sunday after the killer's body had been removed.

Several blocks around the scene in Torrance remained closed to traffic throughout the morning and into the afternoon Sunday. SWAT vehicles with officers hanging off the sides could be seen driving the streets between the two white cargo vans.

The area was a virtual ghost town as it remained blocked off Sunday afternoon. In addition to the yellow crime scene tape surrounding the parking lot where the van and body were found, red hazmat tape warned people away from the area. According to KCAL9 News, the tape was put up because the van’s owner is believed to be a licensed hazardous materials transporter.

The Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department released suspect photos at about 11:20 a.m. via Twitter and said the person "should be considered armed and dangerous."

The manhunt prompted widespread fear in the community, with many foregoing planned Lunar New Year celebrations to stay home.

KCAL News aired an interview with a witness who survived the shooting by hiding when the gunman opened fire. She said the man came looking for his wife, and when he found her, he didn't say anything. He just started shooting at people on the dance floor, the unnamed witness told KCAL.

Initially, investigators weren't certain if there could be more than one suspect involved in the shooting.

Around 1:25 p.m., ABC7 reported from another scene in Torrance several blocks away involving a second white cargo van on Lomita Boulevard, but it was quickly breached roughly 30 minutes after the SWAT officers breached the first van. The second van appeared to be empty.

Luna also clarified the gunman's weapon was "not a high-powered assault rifle." The weapon recovered at that second scene was a magazine-fed semi-automatic assault pistol that had an extended large-capacity magazine attached to it, according to sheriff's officials.

The investigation began Saturday when officers responded at 10:22 p.m. to Star Dance Studio in the 100 block of West Garvey Avenue in Monterey Park, where they found victims in the parking lot of the business and inside, with 10 pronounced dead at the scene, according to the sheriff's department. The 10 who were injured were taken to multiple hospitals in conditions ranging from critical to stable, police said.

Paramedics and police turned a neighboring parking lot into a triage center. The sound of screams poured out into the street from the shooting scene, witnesses said.

Those killed included five men and five women.

“We’re going to use every resource available to us because we need to get this person off the streets as soon as possible,” said Luna Sunday afternoon before authorities declared the shooter dead.

Sheriff's homicide detectives were also in nearby Alhambra investigating the reported shooting attempt at the Lai Lai Ballroom & Studio in the 100 block of South Garfield Avenue that occurred about 20 minutes after the Monterey Park attack, police said.

"To have this tragedy occur on Lunar New Year weekend, makes this especially painful," Alhambra Mayor Sasha Renée Pérez tweeted early Sunday. "Monterey Park is home to one of the largest #AAPI communities in the country. This is a time when residents should be celebrating with family, friends and loved ones — not fearing gun violence."

Authorities were following multiple leads and interviewing dozens of witnesses, according to Luna.

“Everything’s on the table,” Luna said. “We don’t know if this is specifically a hate crime defined by law.”

Sheriff’s department Capt. Andrew Meyer said people were “pouring out of the location screaming” when officers arrived. The earlier celebration had attracted tens of thousands to Garvey Avenue for the first time since the coronavirus pandemic, but police did not screen for weapons at the event, according to Monterey Park's chief of police.

Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people that sits at the eastern edge of Los Angeles. The majority of its residents are Asian immigrants or their descendants, most of them Chinese. A victim resources center was set up at the Langley Senior Citizens Center, 400 W. Emerson Ave., to help community members locate loved ones and access psychological resources.

“It’s difficult to believe it happened here in Monterey Park,” Mayor Henry Lo said Sunday, adding the community will support the victims and their families during a time of healing.

Witnesses said several of Saturday's victims were senior citizens who appeared to be Asian. Hate crimes targeting Asians increased by 339 percent nationwide in 2021, the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism reported.

However, Chester Chong, chairman of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce L.A., told ABC7 that he knew the husband and wife who own the studio and he believed it was a domestic violence incident.

"Sometimes, the wife go (to the dance studio) and the husband does not go. That's why he's so upset, and because we have so many guns, it's too easy to bring a gun over there to kill people. It's horrible, it's very sad," Chong said.

"This is not a hate crime, this is not. This case is a personal case," he said.

While investigators attempt to piece together the motive, accounts by witnesses are slowly trickling out.

Seung Won Choi, the owner of a restaurant across the street from the scene told The Los Angeles Times that three people burst into his business, asked him to lock his door, and described a man with a semiautomatic weapon and multiple rounds of ammunition.

Neighborhood resident Wong Wei told the Times that his friend was in the bathroom of the club when the shooting began but escaped after seeing a man with a long gun and three bodies, including the club's operator.

The tragedy marked not just the fifth mass killing in the U.S. since the start of the year but also the deadliest since May 24, 2022, when 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the U.S.

Saturday's shooting was the worst mass shooting in Los Angeles County since a disgruntled ex-husband killed 10 people in Covina in 2008. The latest violence also comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.

The celebration in Monterey Park is one of the largest Lunar New Year events in Southern California. Two days of festivities were planned but officials canceled Sunday's events following the shooting.

"Monterey Park should have had a night of joyful celebration of the Lunar New Year," said Gov. Gavin Newsom, who visited with victims' families and survivors Sunday. "Instead, they were the victims of a horrific and heartless act of gun violence. Our hearts mourn as we learn more about the devastating acts of last night. We are monitoring the situation closely."

President Joe Biden was briefed by homeland security on the shooting and directed the FBI to support local authorities, according to his press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre. He ordered the nation's flags to be flown at half-staff in mourning for those killed.

Vice President Kamala Harris, who hails from California, discussed the killings Sunday.

“I want to address the tragedy of what happened in my home state in Monterey Park, California," Harris said while addressing a crowd at an event in Florida. "A time of cultural celebration and yet another community has been torn apart by senseless gun violence. So Doug and I join the president and Dr. Biden and, I know, everyone here, in mourning for those who were killed as we pray for those who are injured.

“All of us in this room and in our country understand this violence must stop, and President Biden and I and our administration will continue to provide full support to the local authorities as we learn more.”

Senator Dianne Feinstein also shared her condolences.

``It was heartbreaking to wake up to another mass shooting, this time at a Lunar New Year celebration. What should have been a joyous event ended in tragedy due to senseless gun violence," she said. "My thoughts are with the victims and their families whose lives were
shattered by the latest incident in our nation's epidemic of gun violence.
Enough is enough. We must do more to stop these mass shootings."

Anyone with information regarding the shooting is asked to contact the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department Homicide Bureau at 323-890-5500. Those who prefer to remain anonymous can call Crime Stoppers at 800-222-8477.

City News Service and the Associated Press contributed to this story.