Gunman dead after 11 killed in Los Angeles shooting during Lunar New Year
Police in California say an elderly gunman suspected of killing 11 people at a nightclub is dead. Robert Moore has the latest.
A gunman who killed 11 people in a mass shooting at a Los Angeles-area nightclub after a Lunar New Year celebration has been found dead after suffering a self-inflicted gunshot wound.
Investigators identified 72-year-old Huu Can Tran as the gunman behind the mass shooting.
Police found him dead in a van, in which authorities say he fled after people thwarted his attempt at a second shooting on Saturday night.
The death toll rose to 11 on Monday after health officials announced that one of the 10 people wounded had died, the LA County Department of Health Services said.
LA County Sheriff Robert Luna said the shooting at the Star Ballroom Dance Studio in Monterey Park left five men and six women dead.
Then 20 to 30 minutes later, a man with a gun entered the Lai Lai Ballroom in nearby Alhambra. Authorities believe the two events are connected, but no details about a possible motive have been shared.
Hours earlier, Mr Luna said authorities were looking for a white van after witnesses reported seeing the suspect flee from Alhambra in such a vehicle.
“We believe there is a person inside of that vehicle," Mr Luna said.
"We don’t know their condition, but we’re going to handle that in safest manner that we possibly can and try and identify that person. Could it be our suspect? Possibly."
By midday, police in tactical vehicles and bomb-squad trucks surrounded a white van in a parking lot.
In response to a question, Luna said it was possible that the person barricaded in van is dead.
Members of a SWAT team entered the van a short time later and looked through its contents before walking away. It was unclear what they found.
The sheriff declined to say what type of gun was recovered in Alhambra. He said investigators believe the gun used in Monterey Park was not an assault rifle.
Monterey Park is a city of about 60,000 people on the eastern edge of Los Angeles and is made up mostly of Asian immigrants from China or first-generation Asian-Americans.
It’s too early in the investigation to know if the gunman knew anyone at the ballroom or if it was a hate crime or not, Mr Meyer said.
It marked the fifth mass shooting in the US this month and the deadliest since 21 people were killed in a school in Uvalde, Texas, according to The Associated Press/USA Today database on mass killings in the country.
The latest violence comes two months after five people were killed at a Colorado Springs nightclub.
Seung Won Choi, who owns the Clam House seafood barbecue restaurant across the street from where the shooting happened, told the Los Angles Times that three people rushed into his business and told him to lock the door.
The people also told Mr Choi that there was a shooter with a machine gun who had multiple rounds of ammunition on him so he could reload.
Mr Choi said he believes the shooting took place at a dance club and, while Sergeant Boese did not name the business, he said it was in the 120 block of Garvey Avenue.
One business along that block is Star Ballroom Dance Studio, where an event called 'Star Night' was held from 8pm to 11.30pm, according to a calendar on its website.
The newspaper reported that the shooting happened after 10pm - which was 6am in the UK.
Saturday was the start of the two-day festival, which is one of the largest Lunar New Year events in Southern California.
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