LOS ANGELES (California, US), Jan 22: Ten people were killed in a mass shooting
at a crowded dance studio in a Los Angeles suburb on Saturday night. Ten others
wounded have been admitted to hospitals. Several of them are in critical condition.
The incident took place when the Chinese Lunar New Year’s Eve celebrations
were going on in the area where mostly Asians reside. Tens of thousands had
gathered around the place as the two-day festival, that marks the beginning
of the Chinese lunar calendar, began.
The gunman opened fire in the ballroom dance studio on West Garvey Avenue
in Monterey Park, near the downtown blocks where the festival was being held,
on Saturday night, the LA Times quoted the County Sheriff’s Department. The
incident occurred at 10:22 pm, about 10 km east of Los Angeles, the police told
reporters Sunday morning.
There was no info on the shooter who is at large. Nor do the police know whether
the shooting was targeted.
While the firefighters pronounced 10 victims as dead at the scene, the injured
10 were taken to hospitals.
The owner of a seafood barbecue restaurant on Garvey Avenue just opposite the
scene of shooting said he was told by people running away about a gunman with
a semi-automatic gun firing indiscriminately and reloading. He said his friend
who escaped the shooting told him later the club owner was among those killed.
The Lunar New Year festival was cancelled following the incident.
Recent mass shootings
Last Monday, a 10-month old baby, her 16-year-old mother and a grandmother
were among six shot dead in Goshen in Tulare County.
Last time when a mass shooting took place in Los Angeles was on Christmas Eve
in 2008. A man dressed as Santa Claus entered a home in Covina and shot nine
people dead. In 1984, In San Ysidro McDonald’s, a gunman killed 21 people. In
2015, a terrorist attack claimed 14 lives in San Bernardino.
Located east of Los Angeles, Monterey Park is 65% Asian American, 27% Latino
and 6% White, according to census data.
President Biden's reaction
President Joe Biden has been briefed by the Homeland Security about the Los
Angeles shooting, it is reported.
Reacting to the North Carolina shooting on October 13, he had said, "There
is so much gun violence that many killings do not even make the news anymore."
"Enough. We've grieved and prayed with too many families who have had to bear
the terrible burden of these mass shootings," he said in a statement, a day
after the shooting in Raleigh, North Carolina. Five people had lost their lives
and two wounded. The shooter was just 15 years old.
