Los Angeles United States.- A gunman killed 10 people and injured 10 others at a Los Angeles-area ballroom dance club after the Lunar New Year celebration, sparking a manhunt for the suspect in the fifth mass murder in the US this month. .
Capt. Andrew Meyer of the Los Angeles Sheriff’s Department said the injured were taken to hospitals and their conditions are stable to critical. He reported that all 10 people died at the scene in the city of Monterey Park.
Meyer said people were “coming out of the place screaming” when officers arrived around 10:30 p.m. Saturday. She said officers then entered the ballroom and found victims while firefighters treated the injured.
Meyer did not provide a description of the male suspect or the weapon he used, or why police did not release information about the shooting for hours while the shooter was still at large.
He also mentioned that police were investigating another incident in the nearby city of Alhambra to see if it was related.
Meyer said it’s too early in the investigation to know if the gunman knew someone in the ballroom or if it was a hate crime or not.
The Lunar New Year celebration had drawn thousands of people.
Monterey Park is a city of approximately 60,000 residents located on the eastern edge of Los Angeles. Most of its residents are Asian immigrants or their descendants, most of them Chinese.
The dance studio in downtown Monterey Park is just a few blocks from City Hall on its main thoroughfare of Garvey Avenue, which is dotted with strip malls full of small businesses whose signs are in English and Chinese.
Cantonese and Mandarin are widely spoken, Chinese holidays are celebrated and Chinese movies are shown in the city.
Wong Wei, who lives nearby, told the Los Angeles Times that his friend was in the bathroom at the dance club that night when the shooting began. When he got out, he said, he saw an armed man and three bodies.
The friend then fled to Wei’s home around 11:00 p.m., adding that his friends told him that the shooter appeared to be shooting indiscriminately with a long gun.
